Bad headline. They clarify it in the article, but it launched with a one-off exception because the 2nd stage for this mission didn’t have to do a controlled deorbit. The rest of the Falcons are still grounded.
There are a handful of GTO missions coming up in the manifest that might be able to get it, too, but the’ll probably lift the grounding by the time I look into all of those to figure that out.
Bad headline. They clarify it in the article, but it launched with a one-off exception because the 2nd stage for this mission didn’t have to do a controlled deorbit. The rest of the Falcons are still grounded.
I’m glad Hera beat the weather.
Good point. Would the upcoming Falcon Heavy for Europa Clipper have the same exception?
It should, yeah.
There are a handful of GTO missions coming up in the manifest that might be able to get it, too, but the’ll probably lift the grounding by the time I look into all of those to figure that out.