Drone’s view of Sunday’s SpaceX rocket landing

SpaceX engineers have narrowed the cause of last week’s unsuccessful landing of a Falcon 9 rocket booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean on a commanding issue with an engine throttle valve, according to Elon Musk, the company’s founder and chief executive.

This was just the second time that SpaceX opted to launch 29 of its Starlink V2 Mini satellites in one batch, the current limit for the Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff of the Starlink 10-37 mission from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 12:35 p.m. EDT (1635 UTC).

Falcon Heavy is returning to the hangar and the launch of the USSF-52 mission with the X-37B spaceplane is on hold. A ground issue scrubbed an earlier launch attempt and now required work on the vehicle itself.