FAA approves SpaceX to resume Falcon 9 rocket launches after two-week hiatus

FAA approves SpaceX to resume Falcon 9 rocket launches after two-week hiatus


A Falcon 9 rocket launches a Starlink mission on January 31, 2023 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

SpaceX

The Federal Aviation Administration has approved SpaceX to resume flights of its mainstay Falcon 9 rocket after a brief grounding, with Elon Musk’s company planning to launch its next mission carrying satellites as soon as Saturday.

The FAA clearance came just 15 days after the rocket suffered a rare inflight failure while in orbit during a launch of Starlink satellites.

“The FAA determined no public safety issues were involved” in the July 11 mishap, the regulator said in a statement to CNBC late Thursday, allowing the rocket to “return to flight operations while the overall investigation remains open.”

The hiatus was unusually brief following a flight failure, but SpaceX argued the rocket’s rapid launch pace – on average every two to three days this year – and “unprecedented levels of flight data” from nearly a decade of over 300 consecutive successful orbital launches supported a quicker return to service.

“Safety and reliability are at the core of SpaceX’s operations. It would not have been possible to achieve our current cadence without this focus,” the company wrote in a statement on its website on Thursday.

Sign up here to receive weekly editions of CNBC’s Investing in Space newsletter.

During the July 11 launch, the rocket’s lower first stage, or booster – powered by 9 engines – operated as expected before returning to land. But the rocket’s upper second stage, which has a single engine, failed to reignite as planned and was unable to complete its mission.

SpaceX traced the cause of the midflight failure to a tube known as a “sense line,” a part of the rocket’s system for liquid oxygen, one of the propellants used to power the engine of the second stage. A loose clamp for that tube and the intense vibration of the rocket’s engine led to cracking, the company said. That cracked sense line resulted in a leak of liquid oxygen, causing damage to the rocket’s engine when it attempted to restart in space.

The company said it would remove the tube and its related pressure sensor from the rocket’s upper stage engine “for near term” launches, noting that it is not a critical component for safety. The company plans to rely on alternative sensors in the meantime, as it’s currently testing a longer term design change under the FAA’s oversight.

“An additional qualification review, inspection, and scrub of all sense lines and clamps on the active booster fleet led to a proactive replacement in select locations,” SpaceX added.

Elon Musk's Starlink business has grown quickly and so has its influence



Source

AI is driving huge productivity gains for large companies while small companies get left behind
World

AI is driving huge productivity gains for large companies while small companies get left behind

Amazon Proteus robots demonstrate autonomous navigation using barcodes on the floor during the Delivering the Future event at the Amazon Robotics Innovation Hub in Westborough, Massachusetts, US, on Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022.  Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images Artificial intelligence is widening the productivity gap between large and small companies, lifting up bigger firms that […]

Read More
Amazon targets as many as 30,000 corporate job cuts: Reuters, citing sources
World

Amazon targets as many as 30,000 corporate job cuts: Reuters, citing sources

Amazon logo on brick office building facade with windows, San Francisco, California, Aug. 29, 2025. Smith Collection | Gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning Tuesday, as the company works to pare expenses and compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the […]

Read More
Airbnb wants to help hosts prevent Halloween parties in the U.S. and Canada
World

Airbnb wants to help hosts prevent Halloween parties in the U.S. and Canada

Klaudia Radecka | Nurphoto | Getty Images Airbnb wants to block unauthorized parties this spooky season. The travel and home rental platform said Monday that it will utilize its anti-party technology this Halloween weekend. The tech factors in the length of a stay, the distance from a guest’s location, property type and timing of a […]

Read More