A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a Crew Dragon Resilience capsule lands at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center ahead of the Polaris Dawn Mission in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 28, 2024.
Chandan Khanna | AFP Getty Images
The SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle may return to flight operations while the overall investigation into anomalies during the new Starlink mission remains open, the US Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday.
SpaceX made a return to flight request for the work vehicle on Thursday and the FAA gave its approval on Friday. The agency said flights can resume “if all license requirements are met.”
On Wednesday, the FAA grounded the Falcon 9 after it failed to return to Earth during a routine Starlink mission, forcing the company to ground it for the second time this year.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 successfully launched a batch of Starlink internet satellites into orbit early Wednesday from Florida. The rocket’s reusable first stage booster returned to Earth and attempted to land on a sea barge as usual, but fell into the sea after a fiery touchdown.
The groundings of Falcon 9, the rocket widely associated with the Western world to put satellites and humans in space, are rare. The rocket was previously launched in July for the first time since 2016, after a second stage failure in space destroyed a batch of Starlink satellites.
After the July grounding, SpaceX returned the Falcon 9 to the flight 15 days later, after the FAA granted the company’s request for a quick return to the flight.
The Falcon 9 is also due to launch two NASA astronauts at the end of September aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft that will bring home next year two astronauts who have been stuck on the International Space Station after boarding Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.
SpaceX has been building a fleet of reusable Falcon boosters since the first rocket launched in 2010 which has allowed the company to outpace its competitors in launch frequency.
Another Starlink mission was poised to launch shortly after Wednesday’s flight, from SpaceX’s other launch site in southern California, but the company canceled the mission after a failed landing.
