Word broke early this morning (Eastern Time) that the very last operation of the Falcon 9 that had launched Crew-9 yesterday didn't go as it should have, and that SpaceX was halting Falcon 9 operations until they fully understood what happened. In a post to X timed at 12:20 ET, SpaceX said:
After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.
We will resume launching after we better understand root cause
Unfortunately, that's the extent of what's known at the moment.
You might remember that SpaceX had an upper stage anomaly on a July 12 launch, that was from an upper stage relight to raise the orbit of the load Starlink satellites it was carrying and the resulting RUD ended up taking out the load of satellites because of their not achieving the desired orbit. After a gut-wrenching few minutes of troubleshooting, SpaceX identified the issue as "a crack in a sense line for a pressure sensor attached to the vehicle’s oxygen system. This line cracked due to fatigue caused by high loading from engine vibration and looseness in the clamp that normally constrains the line." They were back to flight in two weeks. (Now where did I leave that sarcasm font?)
One can't help but wonder if this is related.
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