The Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday announced it was approving just one SpaceX Falcon 9 mission, although SpaceX has submitted its mishap report into why the second stage from last week’s Crew-9 mission failed to hit its planned target on reentry.
The FAA is giving the OK for the launch of the European Space Agency’s Hera mission, a follow-up to NASA’s DART mission that impacted an asteroid in 2021 as part of a planetary defense test to see if a potential Earth collision could be avoided through human intervention.
“The FAA has determined that the absence of a second stage reentry for this mission adequately mitigates the primary risk to the public in the event of a reoccurrence of the mishap experienced with the Crew-9 mission,” a statement from the FAA reads.
That Falcon 9 is slated to lift off this morning from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40, the FAA said.
The European Space Agency’s Hera will fly back to the same binary asteroid system visited by DART, with Hera tasked to perform a post-impact survey of the DART target, the smaller Dimorphos asteroid that orbits the larger Didymos.
“Hera will turn the grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and repeatable planetary defense technique,” the European Space Agency’s mission website reads. “Demonstrating new technologies from autonomous navigation around an asteroid to low gravity proximity operations, Hera will be humankind’s first probe to rendezvous with a binary asteroid system and Europe’s flagship planetary defender.”
SpaceX has yet to confirm the launch attempt.
“Safety will drive the timeline for the FAA to complete its review of SpaceX’s Crew-9 mishap investigation report and when the agency will authorize Falcon 9 to return to regular operations,” the FAA stated.
SpaceX announced it was halting Falcon 9 launches after the Crew-9 mishap, and the FAA later confirmed it had halted Falcon 9 launches until an investigation is completed and final report submitted by SpaceX and approved by the FAA.
While SpaceX leads the investigation, it is being observed by the FAA, the National Transportation Safety Board, NASA and the U.S. Space Force.
The FAA said SpaceX submitted its mishap investigation report and a request to return to flight on Friday.
