Follow 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. '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.N) , opens new tab 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. Reporting by Joey Roulette; Additional reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh and Akash Siram; Editing by Will Dunham, Barbara Lewis and David Holmes Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab