https://www.oann.com/tech/spacex-falcon-9-suffers-rare-failure-in-space-imperiling-starlink-mission/
A second-stage engine on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket suffered a rare malfunction in space during a routine Starlink mission on Thursday night, imperiling the satellites in the company’s first rocket failure in more than seven years.
Roughly an hour after Falcon 9 lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday night, the rocket’s second stage in space failed to reignite and deployed its 20 Starlink satellites into a much lower orbit than planned, where they risk burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.
The attempt to reignite the engine in space “resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on his social media platform X, referring to a tongue-in-cheek industry acronym for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly that usually means explosion.
The botched mission of the world’s most active rocket breaks an impressive launch success streak that has maintained the industry dominance of SpaceX, a privately owned company valued at roughly $200 billion, which is relied upon by many countries and space companies to send their satellites into space.
Musk said SpaceX was updating the Starlink satellites’ software to force their on-board thrusters to fire harder than usual to avoid a fiery atmospheric reentry, but he noted “unlike a Star Trek episode, this will probably not work, but it’s worth a shot.”
“The satellite thrusters need to raise orbit faster than atmospheric drag pulls them down, or they burn up,” Musk said.
The failed engine firing occurred on Falcon 9’s 354th mission and marked the first Falcon 9 failure since 2016, when a rocket exploded on a launch pad in Florida and destroyed its customer payload, an Israeli communications satellite.
周四晚上，SpaceX 猎鹰 9 号火箭的第二级发动机在例行星链任务中在太空中发生罕见故障，导致卫星处于危险之中，这是该公司七年多以来首次出现火箭故障。
周四晚上，猎鹰 9 号从加州范登堡太空军基地升空约一小时后，火箭的第二级在太空中未能重新点火，导致 20 颗星链卫星被部署到比计划低得多的轨道上，有可能在地球大气层中燃烧殆尽。
SpaceX 首席执行官埃隆·马斯克在其社交媒体平台 X 上写道，在太空中重新点火的尝试“导致发动机快速非计划拆卸，原因目前未知”，他指的是“快速计划外拆卸”的行业缩写，通常表示爆炸。
世界上最活跃的火箭发射失败，打破了 SpaceX 令人非凡的发射成功纪录，这一纪录使SpaceX一直保持着 行业主导地位。SpaceX 是一家估值约 2000 亿美元的私营公司，许多国家和太空公司都依赖该公司将卫星送入太空。
马斯克表示，SpaceX 正在更新 Starlink 卫星的软件，迫使其机载推进器比平时发射更猛烈，以避免再入大气层中时发生剧烈燃烧，但他指出，“与《星际迷航》中的情节不同，这可能行不通，但值得一试。”
马斯克说：“卫星推进器需要比大气阻力将它们拉下的速度更快地升空，否则它们就会燃烧殆尽。”
发动机点火失败发生在猎鹰 9 号的第 354 次任务中，这是自 2016 年以来猎鹰 9 号首次失败，当时一枚火箭在佛罗里达州的发射台上爆炸，摧毁了其客户有效载荷——一颗以色列通信卫星。
