Falcon 9 launches safely, but suffers an early engine shutdown [Updated]

Enlarge / This batch of Starlink missions will launch with a used rocket fairing. (credit: SpaceX)

8:30am ET Wednesday update: SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket took off on Wednesday morning as scheduled, and the first stage successfully delivered its 60 Starlink satellites into orbit. However, after making an historic fifth flight to orbit, the rocket's first stage was lost during a landing attempt on a drone ship.

This video from shortly before the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage engines shut off appears to show something not going quite right.

This sure didn't look norminal, near first stage MECO. #Starlink pic.twitter.com/FtJ2sX72wK

- Trevor Mahlmann (@TrevorMahlmann) March 18, 2020

In response to a snarky tweet by the author about the first stage landing in the ocean, SpaceX founder and chief engineer Elon Musk clarified that, "There was also an early engine shutdown on ascent, but it didn't affect orbit insertion. Shows value of having 9 engines!" It is likely the engine failure impacted the landing attempt however.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments