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SpaceX says it has identified and fixed the issue that caused the Falcon 9 rocket to fail during a launch earlier this month.
This failure occurred on July 11th, as Falcon 9 carried 20 from SpaceX StarLink broadband satellites toward low Earth orbit. The rocket’s first stage operated normally that day, but its upper stage generated a liquid oxygen leak, which prevented it from performing an orbit raising burn as planned; As a result, Starlink satellites were deployed too low and returned to Earth in a relatively short time, burning up in our planet’s thick atmosphere.
The cause of the leak is no longer a mystery. It resulted from “a crack in the sensing line of a pressure sensor connected to the vehicle’s oxygen system.” EspaçoX announced in a update on Thursday afternoon (July 25). “This line cracked due to fatigue from the high load caused by engine vibration and looseness in the clamp that normally restrains the line.”
The upper stage’s single Merlin engine performed its first burn as planned on July 11, entering the coastal phase into an elliptical orbit on schedule. But the leak prevented the engine from performing a second burn, which was designed to circularize its orbit before deployment of the Starlink satellite, according to SpaceX’s anomaly investigation, which was overseen by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The leak “led to excessive cooling of engine components, particularly those associated with supplying ignition fluid to the engine,” the company wrote in Thursday’s update. “As a result, the engine had a hard start rather than a controlled burn, which damaged the engine hardware and caused the upper stage to lose attitude control.”
The upper stage was able to deploy all 20 satellites, but, as mentioned above, they did not remain in orbit for long.
SpaceX says it has taken steps to prevent the anomaly from recurring.
“For short-term Falcon launches, the faulty detection line and sensor on the second stage engine will be removed,” company representatives wrote in the update.
“The sensor is not used by the flight safety system and can be covered by alternative sensors already present in the engine,” they added. “The design change was tested at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas, with enhanced qualification review and oversight from the FAA and involvement from the SpaceX investigation team. the active reinforcement fleet led to proactive replacement at select locations.”
SpaceX submitted its accident report to the FAA. On a post on X on Thursday afternoon, the company said it is “prepared to quickly return to flying as early as Saturday, July 27.”
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The July 11 anomaly was SpaceX’s first in-flight failure since June 2015, when a Falcon 9 broke up during the launch of a robotic spacecraft. Dragon cargo capsule heading to the International Space Station. The accident led to the loss of the Dragon.
A Falcon 9 did, however, explode on the pillow during pre-flight testing in September 2016. This anomaly also caused the loss of the rocket’s payload, the AMOS-6 communications satellite.
