Jay Peters, writing at The Verge:
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket experienced an engine failure after it launched late Thursday night from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission, Starlink Group 9-3, was carrying Starlink satellites and failed to reignite its upper second stage after developing a leak. “Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” Elon Musk said overnight, confirming that the engine experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
The Falcon 9 has proved to be a remarkably consistent launch vehicle in recent years, as Jeff Foust writes:
The incident is the first failure, partial or total, for a Falcon since a September 2016 pad explosion during a pre-flight test, destroying the rocket and its communications satellite payload. The last in-flight failure of a Falcon 9 was in June 2015, when the upper stage broke apart during the launch of a cargo Dragon spacecraft.
(I was present for the 2015 failure; it was a wild day.)
Until this failure is understood, the Falcon 9 is grounded, as Stephen Clark reports:
The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses all commercial space launches in the United States, will require SpaceX to conduct a mishap investigation before resuming Falcon 9 flights.
“The FAA will be involved in every step of the investigation process and must approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions,” an FAA spokesperson said. “A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety.”
Two crew missions are supposed to launch on SpaceX’s human-rated Falcon 9 rocket in the next six weeks, but those launch dates are now in doubt.