SpaceX said the second-stage booster on its Falcon 9 rocket suffered a rare failure in space during a Starlink mission, putting satellites at risk in the first failure on a SpaceX rocket in more than seven years.
According to the company, about an hour after the Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, an attempt to re-ignite the second-stage engine in space failed, and the rocket deployed its 20 Starlink satellites into a much lower orbit than planned, indicating the risk of them burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.
“An attempt to re-ignite the engine in space resulted in it exploding for reasons currently unknown,” CEO Elon Musk wrote on his X platform.
The engine failure during Falcon 9 mission 354 was the first failure of the rocket since 2016.
