20 satellites fall from sky after catastrophic SpaceX rocket failure, triggering investigation

Twenty Starlink satellites were prematurely released during a failed SpaceX rocket launch last week — and now, observations have confirmed they all burned up in the upper atmosphere after falling back to Earth. Experts are currently investigating what happened, and the rockets responsible will remain grounded until this investigation is concluded.

On July 11, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 10:35 p.m. ET, one day later than originally planned. The launch initially went as expected, and the rocket's first stage successfully detached from the satellite-laden second stage, before landing on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. However, the second stage then failed to complete its second burn due to a liquid oxygen leak, leaving it stranded in a low orbit around Earth. (It is currently unclear if the leak caused the delayed launch.)

The rocket's second stage was still able to release its payload. However, the satellites became stuck in an elliptical orbit around our planet, with a minimum altitude of 84 miles (135 kilometers) — around half the height at which they normally operate. At this elevation, atmospheric drag slowed the satellites down, and they began to fall back to Earth by around 3 miles (5 km) every completed orbit, SpaceX representatives wrote in a statement on July 11.

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"At this level of drag, our maximum available thrust is unlikely to be enough to successfully raise the satellites," SpaceX representatives wrote. "As such, the satellites will re-enter Earth's atmosphere and fully demise."

The company gained control of most of the satellites and ordered them to perform burns at their maximum thrust, known as "warp 9," in a last-ditch attempt to regain altitude, Space News reported. But this was not enough to save the satellites.

Subsequent observations from Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, have since confirmed that all 20 satellites met a fiery death on July 12, Spaceweather.com reported.