FALCON 9 FAILS: SpaceX’s stalwart Falcon 9 rocket, which powers satellite launches as well as trips to orbit for NASA astronauts, experienced a rare failure Thursday night at it attempted to haul a batch of internet satellites to orbit.
The rocket took flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday evening, around 10:30 p.m. local time.
The launch vehicle carried 20 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink network, which already operates via more than 6,000 satellites that have been deployed via dozens of launches.
Most of those flights have gone off without any obvious issues — but Thursday was different.
SpaceX launched another batch of Starlink internet satellites from California Thursday, but the engine powering the rocket's second stage suffered a catastrophic failure, if not an explosion, during an attempt to carry out a final "burn" to raise the low point of the orbit, company founder Elon Musk posted early Friday on X.
Musk referred to the anomaly as a "RUD," a tongue-in-cheek acronym that stands for "rapid unscheduled disassembly."
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