Falcon 9 rocket 'unleashed' after rare incident

On August 30, the US Federal Aviation Administration allowed SpaceX to resume Falcon 9 rocket launches, but continued to investigate a rare incident during the landing of this booster.

Falcon 9 rocket during a launch on August 10. (Source: Space X)

Reuters news agency quoted the FAA's statement as saying: "SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket can resume flight operations while the joint investigation into the incident during the Starlink Group 8-6 mission continues."

Two days earlier, the FAA had issued a notice suspending operations of the Falcon 9 rocket, due to an incident during the latest flight to put Starlink satellites into orbit.

The incident occurred early on the morning of August 27 (local time). The Falcon 9 rocket was launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Center, Florida (USA) to put a group of 21 Starlink internet satellites into low orbit.

The launch set a new record for SpaceX, with the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket being reused for the 23rd time. The rocket returned to Earth and attempted a routine landing on a drone ship anchored off the coast of Florida.

However, live footage showed that during landing, the rocket stage crashed very hard, caught fire fiercely and fell into the sea.

While landing the booster is a secondary goal and the incident did not cause any loss of life or public property, the ability to reuse the entire rocket system is crucial to SpaceX's business model.

The incident broke SpaceX's streak of success over the past three years with hundreds of successful rocket launches and landings.

The Falcon 9 is SpaceX's flagship rocket, trusted by the US government and private industry to launch satellites and astronauts into orbit.

Last July, the rocket was also grounded for about two weeks when the second stage failed and failed to deploy the Starlink satellites at the correct altitude, causing them to burn up as they re-entered Earth's atmosphere.

Source: https://baoquocte.vn/ten-lua-falcon-9-duoc-thao-xich-sau-su-co-hiem-gap-284551.html