SpaceX Pausing Launches to Study Falcon 9 Issue on Crew-9 Astronaut Mission

"SpaceX has temporarily grounded its Falcon 9 rocket," reports Space.com, "after the vehicle experienced an issue on the Crew-9 astronaut launch for NASA." Crew-9 lifted off on Saturday (Sept. 28) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aloft aboard the Crew Dragon capsule "Freedom" [for a 5-month stay, returning in February with Starliner's two astronauts]. Everything appeared to go well. The Falcon 9's first stage aced its landing shortly after liftoff, and the rocket's upper stage deployed Freedom into its proper orbit; the capsule is on track to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday afternoon (Sept. 29) as planned. But the upper stage experienced an issue after completing that job, SpaceX announced early Sunday morning.

"After today's successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9's second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause," SpaceX wrote in a post on X.

Indeed, a Falcon 9 had been scheduled to launch 20 broadband satellites for the company Eutelsat OneWeb from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday night, but that liftoff has been postponed.

Re:

[saloomy]

Lives lost:
- NASA 14 (Challenger / Columbia)
- SpaceX 0
Pretty high success rate for SpaceX.

Re:

[r1348]

You should probably also count Apollo 1 there.

Re: They plus or minus on NASA success percentage

[saloomy]

Many do, but to be honest, that was a failure during testing not a failure during space flight. Definitely admire Grisom, White, and Chafee for their boldness and bravery, as well a their Gemini and in Grissom and Chafees case, Mercury feats and accomplishments. But testing and spaceflight in production are different fields. But if you want to tip the score further in SpaceXs favor, I wont stop you.

Re:

[r1348]

Crew Dragon also underwent ground human testing before being deemed flight worthy, although I admit it's not directly comparable to an Apollo module.

Re:They plus or minus on NASA success percentage n

[jacks smirking reven]

In context NASA has performed 179 human spaceflights (135 were Shuttle) and SpaceX is at 15

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Re:They plus or minus on NASA success percentage n

[AleRunner]

Also NASA's space flights started near the beginning of manned space flight in a much more difficult environment. SapceX is a continuation of NASA's existing knowledge and has had their support at all times. Not to say that SpaceX's achievement is nothing, just that the comparison is not fully fair.

Re:

[antdude]

What about USSR?

Re:

[stooo]

USSR is not relevant any more, Russia is making itself obsolete slowly.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

160 human flights since 1961

Re:

[SmaryJerry]

There simply isn't as much demand for manned space flights over the short period of time their rocket has been in operation, the last 14 years. Their rocket has flown 389 times with 386 successes, over 99.23%. This is essentially triple the launches of the Shuttle which had a much longer period. SpaceX, barring this grounding period, is currently launching a new rocket once every 2 to 3 days. Take the Boeing as comparison, they launched a total of 3 missions for a cost of $4.2B and they didn't design thei

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Look you are talking to someone who thinks SpaceX is cool as shit and deserve all their praise for those successes but that doesn't mean we can just throw stats out there with zero context to what they actually mean. If we want to compare unmanned flights to manned then lets do that but this whole, and no offense to you, but Musk-obsessed fanboys constantly think SpaceX's success means we have to rag on NASA as if they are some staunch competitors when the opposite is true.

NASA and SpaceX are a shining ex

Re:

[SmaryJerry]

Wasn't even implying NASA was bad, just saying SpaceX has a good record. Not sure what you are so upset about.

Re:

[blahabl]

Just wondering where the privates stand compared to NASA on the failure percentages with this tally in a different column.

Let me put it that way. There's no way I'd sit on a rocket riding to space even if you paid me to do it, I hate even flying normal airplanes, but if someone forced me to, I'd sooner go to space three times over on a Falcon 9 than once on anything else, SLS included.

Re: They plus or minus on NASA success percentage

[saloomy]

Well said.

Re: They plus or minus on NASA success percentage

[beelsebob]

STS: 135 flights, 2 catastrophic failures.
Falcon 9 block 5: 322 flights, 1 catastrophic failure.

Falcon 9 has definitely had a few issues of late, though.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

That family of companies fires people for capricious reasons.

Maybe a key employee is now ex-.

SpaceX, you're being too picky

[93 Escort Wagon]

Just go with the Chinese approach. Launch your rockets and cross your fingers that none of the rocket parts lands on a city!

Re:

[jfdavis668]

At least SpaceX can land them. So if they accidentally launch one during testing, it can just land to be retested.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

The whole point of TFS is that SpaceX was intentionally dumping this second stage into the ocean, and they missed their target zone. The joke was to contrast that against what the Chinese do with their launches, since their stages have come down in various odd places - such as Australia.

Re:

[pjt33]

It's surely a matter of opinion whether Australia is an odd place or not, although there may be unanimity with respect to Canberra.

Re:

[JaredOfEuropa]

"Just go with the Boeing approach". FTFY

Re:Automation is the answer

[saloomy]

Many of the components are automatically built, because the precision requirements are far too stringent for hand-made. Often times, these anomalies come from conditions like excessive heating of the fuel because the weather was too warm during accent, or a sensor failed to read an anomalous condition happening too far away.

Sometimes it is manufacturing defect, but rarely. Space is hard

Re: Automation is the answer

[beelsebob]

Iâ(TM)d generally disagree with that when it comes to falcon 9 block 5. The one catastrophic failure was a manufacturing defect. Various landing failures have been either design issues or engine reconditioning issues.

Re: Automation is the answer

[saloomy]

Falcon 9 Block 5 have very few failures compared to Spaceflight overall, and certainly with the cadence and scale being Americas newfound workhouse, they have been tested and designed beyond many other designs.

Re:

[RobinH]

Problems during assembly is typically a Russian thing (or a Boeing thing). We haven't seen much evidence of NASA or SpaceX flubbing that part. It's typically design problems, and mostly because it's really, really difficult to design things that go into space.

More vibration than normal during the livestream

[xfade551]

I watched the ascent portion of the livestream. The second stage seemed like it was vibrating a bit more than normal during the insertion burn, but it was a small enough amount that I wondered if it was just a camera problem with the image stabilization, or whether it was an actual vibration issue. With this news, I'm leaning towards the second.

SpaceX is not Boeing

[tiqui]

With Starliner, Boeing KNEW it had problems even before launching it... but they convinced NASA to go along with the decision to fly anyway. It was entirely predictable that a vehicle with problems in the relatively benign environment of Florida would only get worse in the hostile environment of space.

With SpaceX, development vehicles can be flown with some uncertainties... Musk has said that if you're not breaking things, you're not moving fast enough [in innovating and experimenting]. With mature systems and paying customers, however, [like Crew Dragon atop Falcon9] they exercise all sorts of wise caution. It's rather ironic that NASA considered Boeing the more experienced, mature, wise, and capable vendor when selecting bids for commercial crew and thus gave Boeing twice as much money as SpaceX, and here we are watching SpaceX show itself to be the more professional and experienced company with wiser leadership.