20 satellites fall from sky after catastrophic SpaceX rocket failure, triggering investigation

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20 satellites fall from sky after catastrophic SpaceX rocket ********, triggering investigation

Twenty

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satellites were prematurely released during a ******* SpaceX rocket launch last week — and now, observations have confirmed they all burned up in the upper atmosphere after falling back to Earth. Experts are currently investigating what happened, and the rockets responsible will remain grounded until this investigation is concluded.

On July 11, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 10:35 p.m. ET,

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. The launch initially went as expected, and the rocket’s first stage successfully detached from the satellite-laden second stage, before landing on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. However, the second stage then

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due to a liquid oxygen *****, leaving it stranded in a low orbit around Earth. (It is currently unclear if the ***** caused the delayed launch.)

The rocket’s second stage was still able to release its payload. However, the satellites became stuck in an elliptical orbit around our planet, with a minimum altitude of 84 miles (135 kilometers) — around half the height at which they normally operate. At this elevation, atmospheric drag slowed the satellites down, and they began to fall back to Earth by around 3 miles (5 km) every completed orbit, SpaceX representatives wrote in a

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on July 11.

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“At this level of drag, our maximum available thrust is unlikely to be enough to successfully raise the satellites,” SpaceX representatives wrote. “As such, the satellites will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise.”

The company gained control of most of the satellites and ordered them to perform burns at their maximum thrust, known as “warp 9,” in a last-ditch attempt to regain altitude,

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. But this was not enough to save the satellites.

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A photo of a rocket booster with ice on the outside

Subsequent observations from

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, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, have since confirmed that all 20 satellites met a fiery ****** on July 12,

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.

The re-entering spacecraft did “not pose a threat to other satellites in orbit or to public safety,” SpaceX representatives wrote. And so far, there have been no reports of the spacecraft reaching Earth’s surface, according to Spaceweather.com.

This was the first Falcon 9 launch ******** since 2016 and the biggest single loss of Starlink satellites since February 2022, when a

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shortly after the satellites were put into Earth orbit.

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A photo of the rocket’s first stage landing on a platform

SpaceX is now investigating what happened, under the supervision of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Live Science’s sister site

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. The company will not be able to launch any more Falcon 9 rockets until this investigation is complete.

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SpaceX’s interplanetary Starship rocket was similarly grounded by the FAA in 2023 after it exploded minutes after take-off during its first test flight on April 20 last year.

It is currently unclear how long Falcon 9 rockets will be grounded for. But one unnamed industry expert told Space News that the spacecraft could be grounded for months, which — if correct — would force a major reshuffle of the company’s launch schedule for the rest of the year.

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#satellites #fall #sky #catastrophic #SpaceX #rocket #******** #triggering #investigation

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