Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown," Elon Musk said overnight, confirming that the engine experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly."
After a planned relight of the upper stage engine to raise perigee - or the lowest point of orbit - the Merlin Vacuum engine experienced an anomaly and was unable to complete its second burn.
Falcon 9 has been used for 52 percent of all orbital launches this year, according to Gunter Krebs's Orbital Launches tracker. (Thursday's launch was the 70th Falcon 9 launch in 2024; in all of 2023, the Falcon 9 was used for 96 launches.)
This was the first Falcon 9 failure since 2016 when a rocket exploded on the launch pad.
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