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SpaceX is replacing two engines on its Falcon 9 rocket which will soon transport four astronauts to the International Space Station. The change was made after SpaceX found a substance in the engines that could have started them earlier than expected.
SpaceX found the substance after one of the company’s launches stopped shortly before takeoff in October. One of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, tasked with launching a new GPS satellite for the Space Force, shut down just two seconds before takeoff. “It was a good abortion,” Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of flight construction and reliability for SpaceX, said at a press conference. “He did exactly what we planned to do.”
Today, SpaceX revealed that the rocket automatically halted its launch after two of its nine main Merlin engines attempted to start too soon. Starting too early may have caused something called a hard start, in which the various propellants and fluids of the engine are combined in the wrong order. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 shut down on its own before it happened, but such a hard boot could have damaged the hardware. “It’s not necessarily bad, but in most cases, you know, it makes the engine vibrate,” Koenigsmann said. “And it could cause, you know, some engine damage. In extreme cases, it could cause further damage to the engine. “
After the outage, SpaceX inspected the engines and found a reddish lacquer substance that blocked a relief valve in each model. Lacquer, similar to nail polish, is used to treat surfaces, probably left over from engine construction. Koenigsmann noted that it comes from one of SpaceX’s suppliers working on the engine, although he didn’t name the company. “It might be that person is now more generous with the cleaning fluid or whatever,” Koenigsmann said. “It’s a little hard to understand.”
SpaceX says it is working with the vendor to implement corrective actions and that the company will inspect all hardware more closely in the short term. After the hiatus, SpaceX also looked into the engines in its fleet that will be used for upcoming launches. They looked for someone who exhibited this early start behavior and identified five different engines on three different rockets. Two were on the Falcon 9 rocket which will launch three NASA astronauts and a Japanese astronaut in November, a mission called Crew-1.
After this test, SpaceX opened all the engines and found the same paint inside. SpaceX also noted that the lacquer was found mostly on newer engines that had been built recently, not on engines that have already flown into space and back. Now, the company is switching engines ahead of Crew-1, which is tentatively set for November 14 at 7:49 PM ET. “Two, three days is more or less what you need to get it out,” Koenigsmann said of the engine change. “And then another two, three days to put it back on again.”
Ultimately, SpaceX won’t fly Crew-1 until days after the company launches a joint European and American satellite called Sentinel-6, designed to map the world’s oceans. SpaceX found an affected engine on the Falcon 9 rocket for that flight and had to replace it too. NASA wants to see how the launch is going before making the final decision to fly its astronauts on Falcon 9. The launch of Sentinel-6 is currently scheduled for November 10 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Meanwhile, the four astronauts assigned to crew-1 have begun their quarantine process, mostly staying at home with their families before entering a stricter quarantine two weeks before the flight. NASA also kept them informed of the engine swap and all pre-launch details. “They’ve been in a lot of telecommunications and have heard what’s going on with vehicles,” Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said at the news conference. “We still have some work to do on this engine and offline … but I think we see a good enough path to get there on the fly and will fly when we’re ready.”
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