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SpaceX announced Sunday that following the successful launch of the Crew-9 mission, “the Falcon 9 second stage ejected into the ocean as planned, but experienced a nominal deorbit burn.”
“As a result, the second stage landed safely in the ocean, but outside the target area,” SpaceX said in a post on Twitter. Elon Musk’s company said that “we will resume launches once we better understand the root cause”.
The NASA-SpaceX Crew 9 mission launched Saturday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. Minutes after launch, Dragon separated from the “Falcon 9 second stage” and began its solo journey to the International Space Station.
While the Falcon 9 rocket landed back on Earth, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov continued their journey to the ISS in the Dragon spacecraft.
Falcon 9 first and second stages: What really happened?
Following the Crew 9 launch, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage booster landed at the company’s Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Meanwhile, the second stage headed toward orbit.
Unlike the Falcon 9’s first stage, which returned to Earth for a planned landing, the second stage is disposable. The plan was to discard the second stage after the Crew Dragon Freedom was delivered to orbit.
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft separated from the second stage 12 minutes after launch from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
“At 1:29 EDT, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft separated from the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage and is now flying on its own,” NASA said.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 failed in the past
In August this year, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 after it failed to land back on Earth during a routine Starlink mission.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 successfully launched a batch of Starlink internet satellites into orbit from Florida in August. The rocket’s reusable first stage booster returned to Earth and attempted to land on the ship as usual, but splashed down into the sea after a powerful touchdown, Reuters reported.
The FAA grounded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 due to failure for the second time this year. The rocket was earlier grounded in July for the first time since 2016, following a second stage failure in space that destroyed a batch of Starlink satellites.
The Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket designed and built by SpaceX for reliable and safe transportation of people and payloads to Earth orbit and beyond.
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