SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket can return to flight for a mission planned for yesterday to launch the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft from Florida, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Sunday.
Elon Musk’s company, which has engaged in a public quarrel with the FAA, on Sunday said that it was planning the liftoff for 10:52pm Taiwan time from Cape Canaveral.
“The SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle is authorized to return to flight only for the planned Hera mission scheduled to launch on Oct. 7 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida,” the FAA said.
Photo: Reuters
The agency said it has “determined that the absence of a second stage re-entry for this mission adequately mitigates the primary risk to the public in the event of a reoccurrence of the mishap experienced with the Crew-9 mission.”
The FAA on Sept. 30 said that SpaceX must investigate why the second stage of its Falcon 9 malfunctioned after a NASA astronaut mission, grounding the launch vehicle for the third time in three months. The malfunction caused the booster to fall into a region of the Pacific Ocean outside of the designated safety zone that the FAA approved for the mission.
Hera is set to study the effects of the 2022 impact that NASA’s DART spacecraft had with the asteroid Dimorphos in a test of a planetary defense system — the first time a spacecraft managed to alter the motion of any celestial body. Dimorphos is a moonlet of Didymos, which is defined as a near-Earth asteroid.
The Hera mission is expected to provide data for future asteroid deflection missions with an eye toward redirecting objects that could pose a collision threat for Earth.
Falcon 9 launched DART in 2021.
The FAA on Sept. 17 proposed fining SpaceX US$633,000 for breaching agency rules ahead of two Falcon 9 launches last year.
“They’ve been around 20 years, and I think they need to operate at the highest level of safety,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said on Sept. 24.
SpaceX took issue with Whitaker’s comments, saying the company is the “safest, most reliable launch provider in the world, and is absolutely committed to safety in all operations.”
Whitaker defended the FAA’s decision to delay a planned Starship 5 launch last month, saying that SpaceX failed to complete a timely sonic boom analysis as required. The FAA has said it does not expect a license determination before late next month for that launch.
Musk has criticized FAA leaders over the agency’s proposed fine and called for Whitaker’s resignation.
The FAA in February last year proposed a US$175,000 penalty against SpaceX for failing to submit some safety data to the agency prior to an August 2022 launch of Starlink satellites.
The company paid that penalty.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS