SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket grounded after mishap in space, leaving fate of upcoming missions uncertain

Last Thursday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from the Vandenberg Space Launch Complex in California with a payload of 20 Starlink satellites. And like the preceding 325 times before, the launch seemed to go off without a hitch: the rocket reached space and the first stage returned, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean.

But it soon became clear that all was not well with the second stage, the one that was to deploy the satellites. It appeared that some liquid was leaking from the spacecraft, forming ice crystals, with chunks periodically breaking free, being obliterated by heat coming from the nozzle of the engine behind it.

Initially, no word was mentioned about the anomaly on the broadcast feed. As is typical, the feed ended once the first stage landed, but it left many viewers wondering what to make of the ice build-up.

It turns out that, although the spacecraft was able to deploy its payload, the rocket was unable to put them in their intended orbit. Later, founder Elon Musk tweeted that it suffered a RUD, or a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" — SpaceX-speak for an explosion.

The satellites ended up falling out of orbit and burning up in our atmosphere the next day.

As a result, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has grounded all SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets while it conducts an investigation.

According to an FAA statement received by Spaceflight Now, an online space news site, SpaceX has requested to resume launching the Falcon 9 rocket while the accident is being investigated.

"Usually these things don't wrap up in a couple of weeks," said Jordan Bimm, a space historian and professor of science communication at the University of Chicago.

"Usually, they take a couple months. And would the FAA be willing to expediate this given those factors? I don't know, I think it depends on the nature of the anomaly, and kind of how dangerous it is, and how likely it is to have been reproduced in another vehicle."

While it may seem like nothing but a disruption in SpaceX's plans to continuously launch hundreds more of Starlink satellites, the grounding has far bigger repercussions on future missions, including the first commercial spacewalk.

Polaris Dawn is a privately funded science mission that will use a Falcon 9 rocket and the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft to conduct a science mission.

The mission is the first of its kind, with several science objectives, including flying 700 kilometres above Earth, making it the highest-altitude crewed flight since the Apollo moon missions. This orbit will take it past the protection of the Van Allen radiation belt. For comparison, the International Space Station (ISS) orbits roughly 400 kilometres above Earth.

The crew will also be the first to test SpaceX's extravehicular activity spacesuits (EVA), upgraded from their intravehicular activity spacesuit (IVA). They will also test SpaceX's Starlink laser-based communications in space, along with other health research.

The mission is supposed to launch on July 31.