SpaceX launch experiences a failure of upper stage
For the first time since June 2015, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch experienced a failure today after lifting from Vandenberg in California. During a launch tonight of twenty Starlink satellites, the upper stage showed signs of a fuel leak during its initial burn, and according to a tweet from Elon Musk, it exploded when it relit to make a final orbital adjustment.
Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD [rapid unscheduled dissembly] for reasons currently unknown. Team is reviewing data tonight to understand root cause.
Starlink satellites were deployed, but the perigee may be too low for them to raise orbit. Will know more in a few hours.
The arrow on the screen capture from the live feed, taken during the upper stage’s initial burn, indicates that apparent leak.
The first stage however successfully completed its nineteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
This failure ended an incredible string of 344 successful launches, a record unmatched by any rocket ever in the history of space exploration. It was also the very first launch failure of SpaceX’s Block 5 Falcon 9, the rocket’s final design that has allowed the first stages to be reused now more than twenty times.
The next SpaceX launch is presently scheduled for July 14, 2024, but we should expect that launch to be postponed while engineers investigate the failure tonight. We should also expect that delay to last no more than several weeks, at most.
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For the first time since June 2015, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch experienced a failure today after lifting from Vandenberg in California. During a launch tonight of twenty Starlink satellites, the upper stage showed signs of a fuel leak during its initial burn, and according to a tweet from Elon Musk, it exploded when it relit to make a final orbital adjustment.
Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD [rapid unscheduled dissembly] for reasons currently unknown. Team is reviewing data tonight to understand root cause.
Starlink satellites were deployed, but the perigee may be too low for them to raise orbit. Will know more in a few hours.
The arrow on the screen capture from the live feed, taken during the upper stage’s initial burn, indicates that apparent leak.
The first stage however successfully completed its nineteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
This failure ended an incredible string of 344 successful launches, a record unmatched by any rocket ever in the history of space exploration. It was also the very first launch failure of SpaceX’s Block 5 Falcon 9, the rocket’s final design that has allowed the first stages to be reused now more than twenty times.
The next SpaceX launch is presently scheduled for July 14, 2024, but we should expect that launch to be postponed while engineers investigate the failure tonight. We should also expect that delay to last no more than several weeks, at most.
My July fund-raising campaign for Behind the Black, celebrating its 14th anniversary, is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. And that includes those who contributed $2 to those who contributed hundreds. I always find it impossible to find the words to express my gratitude for this support, especially since no one has to pay me anything to read my work.
Thank you again!
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Well, phooey
Engaging in a little armchair rocketry, it looks like something hidden under the mylar insulation ruptured and started leaking what I assume is either fuel or oxygen. Watching the video, you can see the insulation balloon out before the fluid eventually started leaking down from above. It was fascinating to watch it dribble down the sides of the insulation, freezing as it moved. At first I thought it might be a fuel leak, since the leak is very obviously a liquid. Though I find myself second guessing as to whether it might be oxygen or not. When the frozen chunks broke away and entered the engine exhaust, they vaporized White, not the Orange that I would have expected from the RP1.
In either case, it appeared to be a slow leak which filled the insulation bag around the engine and was not immediately destructive to the engine, allowing it to complete the initial burn. After that though I can only guess that the presence of the fluid around the engine either interfered with ignition or outright destroyed the engine, but did not destroy the spacecraft, since the report says that the satellites were deployed. Guess we’ll learn more in the coming weeks.
Neat video, but I confess I was hoping to see the RUD. Mr. Gealon, there were no armchairs, it was an unmanned flight.
Hope they get to the bottom of what is responsible. Or who is responsible. Hear me now and believe me later, if you have the same type of deranged lunatic working for you who vandalizes Tesla cyber trucks or Tesla facilities because of free speech, if there’s an F Elon bumper sticker in your parking lot, well then you may also have rocketry problems. It is sad but true. Pure conspiratorial speculation of course, but conspiracy theories have a habit of being true in evil bizzaro clown world.
I wonder if radar still tracks the second stage. Maybe the explosion was just outside the craft or just a fuel tank and the rest is just out of control.
I would hate to see it causing trouble for other space craft.
I bet it was sabotage . Russian interference in the election. Yes yes !!! All the evidence points to that alone.
More than likely its just a cracked hose.
Well back to the starting line. Maybe they will break this record in a few years.
I wonder if the necessary investigations and analysis may cause a delay in Jared Issacman’s private spacewalk mission tentatively set for end of this month, the NASA Crew 7 ISS flight in mid-August or the next Axiom private mission scheduled for end of August?
Pretty good run, over 3 times the record of the Delta II launch series. SpaceX really has changed the landscape of space launch.
Separately from any comment on the wonderful success rate of the Falcon 9 – I just wanted to say I find it hilarious that the engineering technical acronym “RUD” (and the term behind it) is escaping from its nerdy domain into the real world, soon to be part of the ordinary vernacular (just like many other such terms before it).
Gealon,
I saw that same phenomenon, and while enjoying the show, I wondered what was different about this flight. Oftentimes, we can see oxygen ice accumulating or resting (vibrating) on the outside of the upper-stage engine, which is a fascinating sight, because about an inch away is the inside of the combustion chamber, very hot indeed. The thermal gradient within the engine housing must be tremendous (averaging hundreds of degrees per centimeter).
__________________
I notice that the failure occurred in the expendable part of the rocket. A decade ago, few people trusted the reusable part of the rocket, as up to then they were all throwaways (except for the Space Shuttle Orbiter), and the manufacturing process was trusted. It is beginning to look like the big problem with modern rocketry (and maybe heritage rocketry) is infant mortality. If it survives first launch, it may be good for a fairly long lifetime. What a difference a decade makes.
For this second reason, I agree with Doubting Thomas: “SpaceX really has changed the landscape of space launch.”
Price, reliability, availability. In these three important areas, SpaceX set a new bar for the rest to reach. Some of others are up to the challenge.
Boeing, Arianespace, and SpaceX have all suffered problems in the past four or five weeks. Despite recent failures or gremlins among several space companies, this is an exciting decade!
Edward noted: “The thermal gradient within the engine housing must be tremendous (averaging hundreds of degrees per centimeter).”
That may understate the case. Combustion temperature for the Merlin is given as 3500K (Sun surface temperature 5800K). Water freezes at 273K.
Of note is that the Merlin engine bell is made of a niobium (melt point 2755K) alloy. I don’t know how much the alloy raises the melt point, but I bet it’s not 1000K. You can go here (https://everydayastronaut.com/engine-cooling-methodes/), to find out why the engine doesn’t melt away.
Of curiosity is why carbon (sublimation point at one atmo 3900K) isn’t used for the combustion chamber? Are there undesirable interactions with fuel/oxidizer? Too massive for the required thickness?
Love it:
“SpaceX really has changed the landscape of space launch.”
Land and space in the same sentence, well sort of.
Still love it.