SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites but loses first stage at landing
SpaceX last night successfully placed 21 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in the early morning hours.
The first stage however fell over on its drone ship in the Atlantic after landing. This was its 23rd flight, which would have been a record reuse of a Falcon 9 booster had it landed successfully. Because of this failure, SpaceX rescheduled another Starlink launch, delaying it one day until August 30, 2024, as engineers assessed the stage data to determine the cause of the problem. From the video is appears that one leg on the far side, out of sight, either failed to deploy or collapsed after landing.
To be clear, SpaceX anticipates only a one day delay in all its launches because of this issue.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
84 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 99 to 53, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies 84 to 68.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
SpaceX last night successfully placed 21 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in the early morning hours.
The first stage however fell over on its drone ship in the Atlantic after landing. This was its 23rd flight, which would have been a record reuse of a Falcon 9 booster had it landed successfully. Because of this failure, SpaceX rescheduled another Starlink launch, delaying it one day until August 30, 2024, as engineers assessed the stage data to determine the cause of the problem. From the video is appears that one leg on the far side, out of sight, either failed to deploy or collapsed after landing.
To be clear, SpaceX anticipates only a one day delay in all its launches because of this issue.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
84 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 99 to 53, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies 84 to 68.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
To be clear, SpaceX anticipates only a one day delay in all its launches because of this issue.
More to the point, it’s what SpaceX will take from this failure, and how it will get even better because of it. As Elon tweeted this morning:
“Now we figure out what went wrong to drive the landing failure rate far above 1 in a thousand, then 1 in 10 thousand … 1 in a milion, etc”
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1828792606446469535
This is how they’ll get to 40 booster reuses. And then, 50 booster reuses.
Darn, their record of 343 landings in a row is broken.
That seems like a tough record to break. Hmm, previous record was just the Space Shuttle with a total of 135 flights.
Someone did the lookup on B1062’s work. During it’s 23 trips it delivered: 2 GPS satellites, 2 Crew Dragons, 2 GEO communication satellites, 40 OneWeb satellites, and 576 Starlink satellites. Totaling to ~313.000 kg of total mass, which is the current record.
@Jay So a couple of Saturn V worth of payload then?
https://x.com/GreeneElizabeth/status/1828769715684307050
By the way, one other note to be made: 23 flights is still the record for any booster in the Falcon 9 fleet, and that is still somewhat short of the Space Shuttle fleet’s record: Discovery holds the record there with 39 flights.
But as for the engines, SpaceX has already beat the Shuttle fleet in that regard. On 23 February 2024, one of the nine Merlin engines powering that launch flew its 22nd mission, which was at the time the flight leading engine. It is already the most flown rocket engine to date, surpassing Space Shuttle Main Engine #2019’s record of 19 flights. This morning, of course, a few engines on B1062 exceeded that mark on their final flight…
I wouldn’t be surprised if within two years, some Merlin 1D has pushed past its 50th reuse.
Richard M: I have been eying those shuttle reuse numbers as well, and am anticipating eagerly the day I can write “this Falcon 9 booster has now flown more flights than any other spacecraft, including any space shuttle.”
Hello Robert,
What a great day that will be.
My guess is…right now there are 2 other Falcon 9 boosters with over 20 uses (B1060 and B1067) and several others in the 15+ range…at current cadences, it is not impossible that one of them could hit the magic #40 by the end of 2025.
At some point, of course, Starship is going to start seriously eating into Falcon 9’s manifest, though, and that will slow the march of more into such rarified territory. But that’s a nice problem to have if you’re SpaceX. The quest will then become to start getting Starship boosters into such veteran status.
It seems that the FAA might require a mishap investigation before the Falcon 9 can resume flights. That would delay both the other Starlink launch and Polaris Dawn.
mkent,
Yep. (Shakes head). https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/28/science/spacex-falcon9-rocket-grounded-polaris-dawn?cid=ios_app
geoffc,
Good one.
@Jay I think I was wrong. It was 267 successful landings in a row, 360+ total.
But I think that is asking how many angels on the head of a pin? 267 wow! Still an amazing record. That is more that almost all but Soyuz and Atlas vehicles make in their entire flight history.