SpaceX set for 1st Space Coast launch since booster fire

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Mar 10, 2025

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SpaceX is set to send up late Monday its first Falcon 9 from Florida's Space Coast since a fire destroyed a booster after it landed.

This Falcon 9 booster is flying for the 22nd time set to launch 21 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 targeting an 11:21 p.m. Eastern time liftoff with backup options through 12:15 a.m. Tuesday and more opportunities starting at 10:48 p.m. Tuesday.

The booster will aim for a recovery landing downrange on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas.

It would be the 21st launch on the Space Coast so far in 2025.

The 20th didn’t have a perfect ending when the booster for another Starlink launch on March 2 from Cape Canaveral landed on the company’s other East Coast-based droneship Just Read the Instructions.

“After successful landing an off-nominal fire broke out in the aft end of the rocket,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president for build & flight reliability, SpaceX. “It damaged one of the landing legs, which resulted in the rocket tipping over.”

He was speaking during a Crew-10 mission preview press conference Friday as SpaceX discusses with NASA all of the Falcon 9 anomalies on all of its launches to make sure they won’t be an issue for the crewed missions.

The booster loss was the third off the Space Coast in about 15 months having lost one in December 2023 that tipped over because of high seas, and then losing another last August when the booster caught fire and tipped over.

To date, SpaceX has managed to successfully recover 415 boosters among Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, and has reused 385 of those on subsequent launches. Several have achieved 20 launches and its fleet leader has 26 launches under its belt.

The culprit behind the fire was a fuel leak of undetermined origin that began about 85 seconds after liftoff. It sprayed Falcon 9’s rocket fuel, which is essentially kerosene, onto a hot component of the engine, Gerstenmaier said.

“It vaporized and created a flammable environment. But on the way up, there was no oxygen to interact with the fuel, so there was no problem at all during ascent and it was perfectly fine. The mission was accomplished,” he said.

But about 45 seconds after the first-stage landed, enough oxygen entered the engine compartment, interacting with the fuel and a still-hot portion of the engine sparking the fire.

“The fire was pretty extensive. Did a lot of damage, but the damage is what we’ve expected, what is accounted for in all our procedures and processes,” he said.

Gerstenmaier said it blew out a barrel panel on the side of the rocket as designed, and the fire was contained wo the engine compartment, so that even if there had been a problem during ascent, it would have resulted only in one of the nine Falcon 9 engines going out, and SpaceX would have been able to complete the mission.

He said what remains of the tipped-over booster came back to Port Canaveral and its parts are being investigated still at Cape Canaveral.

“While it’s disappointing to lose a rocket after a successful mission, the team will use this data to make sure that every Falcon is more reliable on ascent and landing for this mission and for every other mission going forward,” he said.

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