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falcon 9 launches into space

ifeng.com technology news beijing time on october 1, the u.s. federal aviation administration (faa) suspended the launch of spacex's main rocket "falcon 9" on monday because the falcon 9's second stage failed last week. a malfunction occurred while carrying out a mission to transport nasa astronauts. this is the third time the rocket has been grounded in three months.

last saturday, spacex carried out a manned mission, sending two nasa astronauts to the international space station. after falcon 9 was launched, the second stage, which is responsible for sending astronauts further into space, failed to properly re-ignite its engine to perform a "deorbit burn" procedure. this is a routine procedure designed to discard rocket boosters in the ocean after completing their flight. fortunately, the astronauts are still safely heading to the international space station and the docking was completed as planned last sunday. the faa said the booster failure did not cause any casualties or property damage.

however, the failure caused the second-stage rocket to fall into an area of ​​the pacific ocean, deviating from the faa-approved mission-designated safety area. spacex said the booster "experienced an anomaly while performing a deorbit burn, causing the second stage rocket to safely fall into the sea but deviate from the target area. "we will resume launches after we gain a deeper understanding of the root cause. ” spacex wrote in a post on x.

saturday's malfunction was the third incident in the past three months that resulted in the falcon 9 being grounded by the faa. prior to this, falcon 9 was rarely grounded. many western countries rely on it for space launches. in july this year, due to problems with the second-stage rocket, falcon 9 failed to deliver a batch of starlink satellites manufactured by spacex into the intended orbit, resulting in the satellites being destroyed. this was spacex's first mission failure in seven years. subsequently, the faa halted the falcon 9 launch. however, spacex resumed launches 15 days later.

however, the grounding of falcon 9 will not directly affect spacex’s next-generation giant rocket system, starship. the company has already flown it four times since 2023. spacex has publicly complained about the faa's delay in approving the fifth test flight of starship. the goal of this test flight is much larger than the previous one. (author/xiao yu)

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