WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration will allow SpaceX to resume Falcon 9 flights after an upper stage anomaly nearly two weeks ago as the company awaits approval for its next Starship launch.
In a statement late Oct. 11, the FAA said it cleared launches of the Falcon 9 that, with one exception, had been on hold after a Falcon 9 upper stage suffered a problem with a final deorbit burn on the Sept. 28 launch of the Crew-9 mission for NASA.
“The FAA notified SpaceX on Oct. 11 that the Falcon 9 vehicle is authorized to return to regular flight operations,” the agency stated. “The FAA reviewed and accepted the SpaceX-led investigation findings and corrective actions for the mishap that occurred with the Crew-9 mission.”
Neither the FAA nor SpaceX elaborated on the findings of that investigation or the corrective actions that resulted from it. When SpaceX announced the incident that caused it to halt Falcon 9 launches that the upper stage had “an off-nominal deorbit burn” that caused it to reenter outside the designated zone in the South Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand. The company did not provide any additional updates.
The FAA did grant an exception Oct. 6 that allowed SpaceX to conduct a Falcon 9 launch of the European Space Agency’s Hera asteroid mission the following day. The FAA said it allowed that launch to proceed since the upper stage would not reenter, as it instead propelled Hera on an Earth-escape trajectory. That eliminated any public safety concern about a similar deorbit burn anomaly. The launch took place without incident.
The agency emphasized at the time that its approval for the Hera launch did not apply to any other Falcon 9 launches. “Safety will drive the timeline for the FAA to complete its review of SpaceX’s Crew-9 mishap investigation report and when the agency will authorize Falcon 9 to return to regular operations,” it said at the time.
SpaceX has not announced when it will conduct its next Falcon 9 flight. The company is preparing for the Falcon Heavy launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission as soon as Oct. 13 from the Kennedy Space Center, but that launch is not licensed by the FAA.
Also scheduled for as soon as Oct. 13 is the fifth integrated test flight of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle from its Starbase test site in Boca Chica, Texas. That flight has not yet received an updated FAA launch license required for the launch to proceed, but SpaceX has continued launch preparations that include airspace and maritime notices as well as road closures near Starbase.
SpaceX, in a social media post Oct. 11, noted that the vehicle was ready for launch, with the Starship upper stage stacked on its Super Heavy booster. “We expect regulatory approval in time to fly on October 13,” the company stated.