SpaceX founder Elon Musk said it was uncertain if the spacecraft could be saved using onboard ion thrusters after the company experienced its first Falcon 9 rocket failure in flight since 2015.
The rocket, a common launch vehicle that puts both astronauts and satellites into orbit, took off on Thursday night from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage of the rocket performed admirably, making an amazing but now commonplace droneship landing.
Late on Thursday during a Starlink mission, the Merlin Vacuum engine of the spacecraft failed to restart a second time, causing the upper stage to disintegrate.
Although all twenty of the spacecraft’s satellites were launched, they may have reentered the atmosphere because they failed to enter the proper orbit.
“SpaceX has made contact with 5 of the satellites so far and is attempting to have them raise orbit using their ion thrusters,” the company added.
The SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, who also owns X, formerly Twitter, followed up with a highly technical explanation about ion thrusters, a form of electric propulsion used in spacecraft.
“We’re updating satellite software to run the ion thrusters at their equivalent of warp 9. Unlike a Star Trek episode, this will probably not work, but it’s worth a shot,” he said.
The failure of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket during the launch of a series of Starlink broadband satellites is being investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The Falcon 9 family’s otherwise impressive record ended with this failure.
Since the top stage failed in 2015, neither the Falcon Heavy nor the regular rocket have malfunctioned during flight.
Despite this setback, SpaceX still possesses additional Falcon 9 rockets for flight.
Due in large part to the limited number of flights, its accident rate since 2015 has also generally been lower than that of other of its competitors in the private spaceflight market, such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Rocket Lab.
We earlier reported that SpaceX has introduced Starlink Mini, a more compact model of their satellite internet service that can fit into a backpack.
