WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) - SpaceX's workhorse

Falcon 9 rocket was grounded by the U.S. Federal Aviation

Administration (FAA) on Friday after one broke apart in space

and doomed its payload of Starlink satellites, the first failure

in more than seven years of a rocket relied upon by the global

space industry.

Roughly an hour after Falcon 9 lifted off from the

Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday night, the

rocket's second stage failed to reignite and deployed its 20

Starlink satellites on a shallow orbital path where they will

reenter Earth's atmosphere and burn up.

The attempt to reignite the engine "resulted in an engine

RUD for reasons currently unknown," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote

early on Friday on his social media platform X, using initials

for the industry term Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly that usually

means explosion.

The Falcon 9 will be grounded until SpaceX investigates the

cause of the failure, fixes the rocket and receives the FAA's

approval, the agency said in a statement. That process could

take several weeks or months, depending on the issue's

complexity and SpaceX's plan to fix it.

The botched mission of the world's most active rocket ended

a success streak of more than 300 straight missions during which

SpaceX has maintained its dominance of the launch industry. Many

countries and space companies rely on privately owned SpaceX,

valued at roughly $200 billion, to send their satellites and

astronauts into space.

Musk said SpaceX was updating the software of the Starlink

satellites to force their on-board thrusters to fire harder than

usual to avoid a fiery atmospheric re-entry.

"Unlike a Star Trek episode, this will probably not work,

but it's worth a shot," Musk said.

The satellites pose no threat to the public, SpaceX wrote on

Friday evening on X. The company did not estimate when they

would make their reentry, which would appear as streaks of light

across the sky.

"Shooting stars," Musk said, replying the SpaceX post.

Their altitude is so shallow that Earth's gravity is pulling

them 3 miles (5 km) closer toward the atmosphere with each

orbit, SpaceX said earlier in the day, confirming they would

"re-enter Earth's atmosphere and fully demise."

NASA said in a statement on Friday it monitors all of

SpaceX's Falcon 9 missions.

"SpaceX has been forthcoming with information and is

including NASA in the company's ongoing anomaly investigation to

understand the issue and path forward," a U.S. space agency

spokesperson said.

SpaceX said the second stage's failure occurred after

engineers detected a leak of liquid oxygen, a propellant.

'INCREDIBLE RUN'

The mishap occurred on Falcon 9's 354th mission. It was the

first Falcon 9 failure since 2016, when a rocket exploded on a

launch pad in Florida and destroyed its customer payload, an

Israeli communications satellite.

"We knew this incredible run had to come to an end at some

point," Tom Mueller, SpaceX's former vice president of

propulsion who designed Falcon 9's engines, replied to Musk on

X. "... The team will fix the problem and start the cycle

again."

The failure will likely stymie SpaceX's intensifying Falcon

9 launch pace. The rocket's 96 launches last year were its most

to date and exceeded the annual launch total in any country. By

comparison, China, a space rival to the United States, launched

67 missions to space in 2023 using various rockets.

"It is extremely rare for Falcon to fail. They have a much

better rate than almost any other rocket developed in terms of

the success of their mission," said Will Whitehorn, chair of the

venture capital firm Seraphim Space Investment Trust.

Although Thursday night's Falcon 9 flight was an in-house

mission, the rocket's grounding is likely to impact upcoming

SpaceX customer missions.

Falcon 9 is the only U.S. rocket capable of sending NASA

crews to the International Space Station. NASA was expecting to

launch its next astronaut mission in August, with SpaceX's Crew

Dragon astronaut capsule launching atop the rocket.

NASA has been trying to help fix unrelated problems with

Boeing's ( BA ) Starliner spacecraft, which is in the midst of a

test mission to prove it can become NASA's second astronaut ride

to orbit alongside Crew Dragon.

SpaceX was poised to launch as early as July 31 its Polaris

Dawn Crew Dragon mission sending four private astronauts into

orbit for a few days to conduct the first commercial spacewalk

using the company's newly designed spacesuits.

Jared Isaacman, head of the Polaris program and a mission

crew member, said he expects SpaceX to quickly recover from the

failure.

"As for Polaris Dawn, we will fly whenever SpaceX is ready

and with complete confidence in the rocket, spaceship and

operations," Isaacman wrote on X.

Musk replied that "we will investigate the issue and look

for any other potential near-misses."

SpaceX has launched about 7,000 Starlink satellites of

various designs into space since 2018 for its global broadband

internet network. Industry analysts have said the satellites on

Thursday's mission could be worth at least $10 million combined.