SpaceX wants FAA to let Falcon 9 fly again amid mishap investigation
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FAA grounds SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket after upper-stage issue
The Federal Aviation Administration has placed SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket fleet on hold pending an investigation into an upper-stage issue.
SpaceX wants the Federal Aviation Administration to let its grounded Falcon 9 rocket fleet return to flight amid an ongoing public-safety investigation, letting the company resume its array of uncrewed commercial missions while engineers study what happened during Thursday’s upper-stage malfunction.
But what about Falcon 9 missions with humans on board?
Polaris Dawn, a mission featuring billionaire commander Jared Isaacman and three fellow commercial astronauts in a SpaceX Dragon capsule, was scheduled to lift off as early as July 31 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Following suit, NASA’s Crew-9 was slated to launch as soon as August to the International Space Station.
More: SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets grounded by FAA, putting Space Coast missions on indefinite hold
“What I would imagine the requirement will be is that, they understand what happened. They have a plan to fix it. And they fly at least one non-crewed Falcon 9 to verify the fixes before Polaris Dawn is cleared to go,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“And that’s not really going to be a problem, because they’ve got a lot of Falcon 9s backed up, raring to go,” McDowell said.
Assuming that SpaceX adds instrumentation to the rocket upon return to flight to collect extra diagnostics for investigators, McDowell said, “the question is whether it’s weeks or months,” before the FAA grants permission to resume crewed missions.
On Monday, SpaceX requested that the FAA agree that last week’s anomaly did not jeopardize public safety, clearing Falcon 9s to return to flight while the investigation remains open. The ill-fated rocket, which carried a payload of 20 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, developed a liquid oxygen leak on its second, upper stage — unexpectedly forcing deployment of the satellites into a too-shallow orbit.
“The FAA is reviewing the request and will be guided by data and safety at every step of the process,” an agency statement said of SpaceX’s Monday request. Further details remain unknown.
“It’s going to impact crewed launches more than (regular) launches because they’re going to make sure that they have everything absolutely figured out and safe before they put another crew on board,” said Laura Forczyk, founder and executive director of the Atlanta space consulting firm Astralytical.
Falcon 9s launched 46 of 50 Florida missions
Meanwhile, the Space Coast’s launch schedule — which was speeding along this year at a record-breaking pace — remains largely on indefinite hold. Falcon 9s have accounted for 46 of the 50 missions launched during 2024 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and adjacent NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
In a statement, SpaceX pledged to “perform a full investigation in coordination with the FAA, determine root cause, and make corrective actions to ensure the success of future missions.” Per the federal agency, “a return to flight is based on the FAA…
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