SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket suffers rare inflight failure, is grounded during investigation

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is grounded, pending an incident investigation, after an inflight failure — a rare misfire for the company's workhorse vehicle.

The mission, known as "Starlink Group 9-3," launched from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Thursday evening and was carrying 20 satellites bound for low Earth orbit.

The rocket's lower first stage, or booster, operated as expected before returning to land. But the rocket's upper second stage failed to reignite its engine as planned and was destroyed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed.

"Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown," Musk wrote in a post on social media. RUD, or "rapid unscheduled disassembly," is a term SpaceX uses to refer to an explosive or destructive event.

Falcon 9 is grounded until the Federal Aviation Administration signs off of on SpaceX's investigation of the incident, the federal regulator confirmed.

"The FAA will be involved in every step of the investigation process and must approve SpaceX's final report, including any corrective actions," the agency said in a statement to CNBC.

The Starlink mission was the 69th Falcon 9 launch of the year – with the company averaging a blistering pace of a launch every two to three days in 2024 – but the investigation will likely delay launches planned in the weeks ahead, including two crewed missions: The private Polaris Dawn and NASA's Crew-9.

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SpaceX still deployed the 20 Starlink satellites, but noted that the second stage engine failure means the satellites are in "a lower than intended orbit." As of early Friday morning, the company said that it had made contact with five so