What precisely went mistaken final week stays a thriller. Nonetheless, specialists agree the occasion can’t be disregarded. “‘Oh, it was a fluke’ just isn’t, within the trendy area trade, a suitable reply,” says McDowell. What he finds most shocking is that the malfunction didn’t happen in one of many reusable components of the rocket (just like the booster), however as a substitute in an element often called the second stage, which SpaceX switches out every time the rocket launches.
Stalled schedules
It stays unclear when the Falcon 9 will fly once more. A number of upcoming missions will seemingly be postponed, together with the billionaire tech entrepreneur Jacob Isaacman’s Polaris Daybreak, which might have been the primary all-private mission to incorporate an area stroll. It’s attainable NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the Worldwide House Station (ISS), deliberate for mid-August 2024, may also be delayed.
Uncrewed missions might be affected too. One which stands out is the Europa Clipper mission, which is meant to discover Jupiter’s icy moon and assess its habitability. In response to McDowell, the mission, which is deliberate for October 2024, will seemingly be delayed by the Falcon 9 grounding. That’s as a result of there’s a slim time-frame inside which the satellite tv for pc will be launched. (The mission is dealing with a technological hangup unrelated to the Falcon 9 that might additionally push again its launch.)
The incident reveals a necessity for the US to discover alternate options to the Falcon 9. McDowell says the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, accompanied by Boeing’s Starliner capsule, was once the following most suitable choice for US-based crewed ISS missions. However the Atlas V is being phased out. It will likely be changed by the ULA’s Vulcan Centaur, {a partially} reusable rocket that has made just one check flight to date. Plus, the Starliner capsule has critical points which have left two NASA astronauts caught on the ISS, probably till August.
Blue Origin’s reusable New Glenn rocket may very well be a competitor, but it surely hasn’t flown but. The aerospace firm says it hopes to launch the rocket earlier than 2025. Blue Origin’s different reusable rocket, New Shepard, just isn’t able to flying into orbit.
The Falcon 9 malfunction makes these tasks all of the extra important. “Even the Falcon 9 can have issues,” says McDowell. “It’s vital to have a number of routes of entry to area.”
