The Federal Aviation Administration is demanding that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin investigate what went wrong in their respective test flights of large rockets this week.
The regulator both companies said must carry out what is known as an “accident investigation”. These investigations involve the companies and the FAA working together to understand what went wrong, why it went wrong, and take corrective action. In either case, the regulator would have to sign off on the companies before those rockets could fly again. It’s not immediately clear how long that will last.
In SpaceX’s case, an explosion occurred during the seventh test flight of the Starship rocket system, which launched from Boca Chica, Texas on Thursday. Musk he wrote in X that the Starship itself became overpressurized due to excess gas as it ascended into space and eventually exploded. The company official explanation on its website it states that the interior of the ship caught fire.
The starship’s destruction created a debris field that lit up the skies above the Turks and Caicos Islands, prompting the FAA to slow and even divert some flights in nearby airspace as a result of low fuel levels. There were no reports of injuries, according to the FAA, but the regulator said it was working with SpaceX to “confirm reports of damage to public property in Turks and Caicos.”
SpaceX and the FAA already appear to be at odds over one particular detail about the explosion. The FAA technically activated what’s known as a “Debris Response Area,” which the administration says it only does if pieces of the spacecraft fall outside danger areas established before launch. SpaceX insists on its website that “[a]Any surviving pieces of debris would have fallen into the designated hazard area.”
Hours before SpaceX’s rocket launch, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida for the first time. The upper stage of the New Glenn rocket successfully entered orbit, but the booster exploded on the way back for an attempted landing on a drone ship at sea.
The FAA says it is “aware that an anomaly occurred during the Blue Origin mission” and that no injuries or damage to public property have been reported.
