SpaceX Had To Postpone Falcon Launch After Regulatory Issues

A Falcon 9 rocket was slated to launch on 29th June, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The launch was supposed to carry a cosmic carpool called Transporter 2 (not the movie). The transporter 2 consists of dozens of satellites part of a rideshare mission. This launch was supposed to be the company’s 20th mission for this year alone but sadly it has since been postponed.

SpaceX had to postpone the launch just seconds before liftoff yesterday when a seemingly wayward place flew inside the mission’s safety zone. The Falcon 9 rocket was merely 11 seconds away from launching 88 small satellites in order at 2:56 p.m. EDT. SpaceX wrote on Twitter informing everyone of the delay and said that the launch will go forward tomorrow. You can view the tweet below.

Hold called due to Range being no-go; teams are setting up for tomorrow's backup opportunity

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 29, 2021

Elon Musk has complained many times that regulators and their laws have been keeping his space company’s ambitions back for years. This setback is also attributed to a keep-out zone law. He complained on Twitter that “Unfortunately, the launch is called off for today, as an aircraft entered the ‘keep out zone,’ which is unreasonably gigantic. There is simply no way that humanity can become a spacefaring civilization without major regulatory reform. The current regulatory system is broken”.

The 88 satellites included three for Starlink which has been pushed ahead to an August launch. The other 85 satellites are small payloads for customers like Satellogic, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the U.S. Space Development Agency, Swarm, Spire, Spaceflight Inc., and Loft Orbital.

This isn’t the first time holds have delayed Musk and his ambitions. He has talked about his discontent with the airspace regulations. While some may argue that these regulations are there for the safety of the people, Musk thinks that they are too limiting in their nature. The Federal Aviation Administration recently investigated SpaceX’s safety protocols when several test launches of Starship prototypes has exploded.

Musk dissed the FAA in a tweet back in January saying that “unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure”.