SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, took off from a launchpad in South Texas at 9:33 a.m. ET Thursday but exploded midair before stage separation.
Thursday’s launch marked the vehicle’s historic first test flight. “As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation,” SpaceX tweeted.
The massive Super Heavy rocket booster, which houses 33 engines, lifted off and sent a massive boom across the coastal landscape as it fired to life. The Starship spacecraft, riding atop the booster, soared out over the Gulf of Mexico.
About 2½ minutes after takeoff, the Super Heavy rocket booster was scheduled to expend most of its fuel and separate from the Starship spacecraft, leaving the booster to be discarded in the ocean. The Starship was meant to use its own engines, blazing for more than six minutes, to propel itself to nearly orbital speeds.
The flight reached its highest point 24.2 miles (39 kilometers) above the ground, and the explosion occurred about four minutes after liftoff, according to SpaceX.
“The vehicle experienced multiple engines out during the flight test, lost altitude, and began to tumble,” according to an update from SpaceX. “The flight termination system was commanded on both the booster and ship.”
SpaceX said that “teams will continue to review data and work toward our next flight test.” The road and beach near the launchpad are expected to remain closed until Friday.
https://www.facebook.com/skynews/videos/9539621252722389/?app=fbl
“An anomaly occurred during the ascent and prior to stage separation resulting in a loss of the vehicle. No injuries or public property damage have been reported,” according to a statement Thursday afternoon by the Federal Aviation Administration.
“The FAA will oversee the mishap investigation of the Starship / Super Heavy test mission. A return to flight of the Starship / Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety. This is standard practice for all mishap investigations.”
Defining success for Starship
Although it ended in an explosion, Thursday’s test met several of the company’s objectives for the vehicle.
Clearing the launchpad was a major milestone for Starship. In the lead-up to liftoff, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sought to temper expectations, saying, “Success is not what should be expected. … That would be insane.”
“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary,” SpaceX tweeted after the explosion.
Musk congratulated team members on “an exciting test launch” in a post-launch tweet and said they “learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.”
In a follow-up email to his employees, Musk added, “I don’t want to jinx it, but I think we are highly likely to reach orbit this year and recover the booster and ship, if not this year, certainly next year. Mars, here we come!”
SpaceX will need a new launch license from the FAA to make another attempt, but the company does not expect the process to be as laborious as securing the license for Thursday’s launch.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson took to Twitter to share his congratulations on the flight test.
“Every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward. Looking forward to all that SpaceX learns, to the next flight test — and beyond.”
The test flight comes after years of explosive tests, regulatory hurdles and public hyping from Musk.
The company has been known to embrace fiery mishaps during the rocket development process. SpaceX maintains that such accidents are the quickest and most efficient way of gathering data, an approach that sets the company apart from its close partner NASA, which prefers slow, methodical testing over dramatic flare-ups.
Musk has talked about Starship — making elaborate presentations about its design and purpose — for years, and he frequently harps on its potential for carrying cargo and humans to Mars, though NASA also plans to use the vehicle to put its astronauts on the moon. He’s even said that his sole purpose for founding SpaceX was to develop a vehicle like Starship that could establish a human settlement on the Red Planet.
Leave a Reply