A second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket suffered a rare and severe failure, breaking apart in orbit on Thursday night, threatening the launch of 20 Starlink satellites.
This incident represents the first failure of the Falcon 9 in more than seven years, raising alarms in the global space sector, as per Reuters.
After launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the rocket's second stage failed to reignite about an hour into the mission.
This resulted in the satellites being deployed into a much lower orbit than planned, risking them burning up in Earth's atmosphere.
Meanwhile, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk described the incident as an "engine RUD" (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly), commonly understood as an explosion.
He stated that the Starlink satellites' software was being updated to boost their on-board thrusters in an attempt to save them, although he admitted this was unlikely to succeed.
This failure occurred during Falcon 9's 354th mission, breaking a long success streak since its last failure in 2016.
However, the malfunction, though occurring on an in-house mission, could impact SpaceX's schedule for upcoming customer missions.
Falcon 9 is the only U.S. rocket currently capable of sending NASA crews to the International Space Station using SpaceX's Crew Dragon.
NASA has not yet commented on the incident, and it is also addressing challenges with Boeing's Starliner, which it aims to develop as an alternative for crewed missions to orbit alongside Crew Dragon.
