SpaceX completes static fire of Falcon 9 rocket ahead of Starlink and Crew 9 missions

On Monday, SpaceX fired the nine Merlin engines on its Falcon 9 rocket ahead of the planned launch of the Starlink 10-5 mission on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. The booster, B1085, will also launch the Crew-9 mission for NASA no earlier than Sept. 24. Image: Spaceflight Now

SpaceX completed a test fire of a brand-new Falcon 9 rocket that will eventually carry the Crew 9 mission to the International Space Station. The static fire test and a “shakedown” mission were ordered for the booster after it suffered moisture intrusion on its way from SpaceX’s McGregor test facility in Texas to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

If all goes according to plan, the rocket will launch no earlier than Tuesday morning on the Starlink 10-5 mission and will then start preparations for the Crew 9 mission, currently scheduled for no earlier than Sept. 24.

The booster, tail number B1085 in the SpaceX fleet, was first mentioned as a watch item during a briefing on the Crew-9 mission in late July.

“We had to work through a little bit of challenge with moisture intrusion during transport from McGregor to the Kennedy Space Center,” said Steve Stich, the manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

He added, during a briefing on Aug. 7, that the booster needed to go through the additional testing due to the “water intrusion,” saying it will improve confidence to have SpaceX “get a little shakedown of that booster” with a Starlink mission before it flies the four members of the Crew-9 mission.

“There was some moisture that went into the fuel in the [liquid oxygen] tank of that booster when it was transported from McGregor to the Cape. The desiccant system didn’t perform the way it was supposed to,” Stich said. “That desiccant system is supposed to keep that air dry and so, it didn’t perform the way it was supposed to. So we had to dry those tanks out and then replace a few components on the vehicle.”

The brief ignition of the rocket’s nine first stage engines was due to take place Monday evening at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

B1085 is set to make its first launch debut during the Starlink 10-5 mission, which will liftoff during a four-hour launch window that opens at 5:20 a.m. EDT (0920 UTC), adding another batch of Starlink satellites to SpaceX’s megaconstellation of more than 6,000 satellites in low Earth orbit.

The launch of B1085 comes a little more than a month ahead of when SpaceX and NASA will launch the Crew-9 mission. As with the Starlink 10-5 mission, the Crew-9 flight will liftoff from SLC-40. This will mark the first crewed launch from that pad in its history.

However, the size and makeup of the Crew-9 flight is a bit up in the air. Currently, the agency is determining whether or not that Crew Dragon spacecraft will ultimately be used to return NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams to Earth, following their launch on a Boeing Starliner spacecraft.

NASA is poised to make a decision on whether they feel comfortable returning Wilmore and Williams on Starliner given its thruster and helium issues. If they opt to have the duo return with a SpaceX vehicle, then the Crew-9 mission will launch with just two people on board and splashdown of the coast of Florida in February 2025 with two original Crew-9 members and the Starliner crew onboard.

During its most recent briefing, NASA officials declined to state who would be flying on the Crew-9 mission in an altered scenario. Russia would likely insist on its cosmonaut, Alexander Gorbunov, as part of the NASA-Roscosmos seat swap agreement, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet.