Falcon 9 Completes Second Return to Flight of 2024

SpaceX’s Starlink 8-10 mission lifted off successfully at 3:43 AM EDT on the morning of August 31st, deploying 21 Starlink satellites into orbit. The mission was completed nominally, representing only the latest of SpaceX’s routine Starlink satellite deployments. Notably, however, beyond the context of the mission itself, the launch represents something less routine – Falcon 9’s second Return to Flight (RTF) of 2024, and the end of the launch vehicle’s shortest standdown to date.

Two days earlier, on the night of August 28th, the Starlink Group 8-6 mission encountered a mishap. The first stage booster, Falcon 9 B1062, failed its landing on the SpaceX droneship Shortfall of Gravitas, which resulted in the booster tipping over and exploding. This was the first landing failure since 2021 and broke a streak of 267 successful landings. B1062 was the fleet leader for Falcon 9, and Starlink 8-6 was its 23rd successful launch. The booster previously carried Inspiration4 and Axiom-1 (both human spaceflight missions), five customer payloads, and 16 batches of Starlink satellites. SpaceX has recently expressed intent to refly each Falcon 9 booster 40 times; in some ways, the loss of B1062 is the first growing pain as the launch service giant inches towards this ambitious milestone.

SpaceX and the FAA quickly announced an investigation and a stand down for the Falcon 9 vehicle, as they did when Starlink 9-3 experienced an upper stage engine failure in July. A key difference, however, was that unlike 9-3, Starlink 8-6 still resulted in a successful payload deployment, the upper stage was unaffected by the booster’s mishap. 

Previously, such an incident would not result in a grounding; however, new FAA policies enacted in 2021 classify permanent loss of a reusable vehicle as an incident, with Starlink 8-6 being the first time this has occurred. However, Falcon 9 did not stay grounded for long, with the FAA releasing an official statement hours ahead of Starlink 8-10’s launch:

“The SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle may return to flight operations while the overall investigation of the anomaly during the Starlink Group 8-6 mission remains open, provided all other license requirements are met. SpaceX made the return to flight request on Aug. 29 and the FAA gave approval on Aug. 30.”

This mirrors SpaceX’s previous RTF with Starlink 10-9 on July 27th, where the investigation remained open but launches were permitted to continue under the premise that such operations do not pose harm to the general public. SpaceX has taken full advantage of this reasoning, and now has three open investigations regarding Starship Integrated Flight Test 3, Starlink Group 9-3, and Starlink Group 8-6, but has seen minimal operational impact. The two week stand down in the wake of 9-3 resulted in a rapid return to cadence, with three Falcon 9 boosters launching from all three active Falcon 9 launch pads within roughly 10 hours of each other. This time around, while SpaceX looks to the launch of Polaris Dawn, weather has been a greater threat to launch scheduling than this incident.

Also last night, a second Starlink mission, Starlink Group 9-4, launched from the West Coast Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, at 1:48 AM PDT (4:48 AM EDT). Occurring just one hour after 8-10, the mission also proceeded nominally, with another 21 Starlink satellites being deployed.

In the last two months SpaceX has ended their success streaks for both launch and landing of Falcon 9; as of now, those statistics sit at 15 and 2 respectively. One thing remains remarkably clear – SpaceX is undeterred, and shows no intent of slowing themselves down in the wake of these incidents.

Edited by Beverly Casillas and David Diebold