Watch: SpaceX Starlink Mission Aborted Seconds Before Launch
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March 27, 2020Watch: SpaceX Starlink Mission Aborted Seconds Before Launch
SpaceX on Sunday scrubbed the launch of 60 new Starlink satellites at the last second—due to an engine power issue with the mission’s Falcon 9 rocket.
The onboard computer triggered an abort just before a scheduled 9:22 a.m. ET liftoff, after detecting an issue with one of its nine Merlin 1D engines.
Even the countdown announcer was surprised.
With about one minute to go, Falcon 9 flight computers took control of the launch procedure.
At T-10 seconds, a human pipes in, following the clock as it drops: 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero … liftoff!
Moments later, as the camera focuses on the still-grounded rocket, a clearly disheartened commentator adds, “Disregard. We have an abort.”
“Standing down today,” SpaceX tweeted over the weekend. “Standard auto-abort triggered due to out-of-family data during engine power check.”
After about two minutes of watching smoke clear around the Falcon 9 in a YouTube livestream (above), Distribution Supervisor Michael Andrews appears with more information.
“As you just heard … we had a condition regarding engine power that caused us to abort today’s launch,” he explained. “Keep in mind: The purpose of the countdown is to help us catch potential issues prior to flight. There are a thousand ways a launch can go wrong, and only one way it can go right.
“Given that we are overly cautious on the ground, and if the team or the vehicle see anything that just looks even slightly off, we’ll stop the countdown,” according to Andrews. “Overall, the vehicle appears to be in good health. But that will end our launch attempt for today.”
The firm will announce its next launch date opportunity “once confirmed on the Range.”
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