SpaceX launched its 500-foot-tall Starship, by far the world’s most powerful rocket, on an unmanned test flight on Thursday morning; however, a few minutes after leaving the launch site, the rocket exploded in mid-air.
The rocket, designed to transport humans to the moon and Mars, was launched from the southern tip of Texas on April 20.
A few minutes after the launch window opened at 8:28 a.m. local time (9:28 a.m. ET) at the company’s flight test facility in Boca Chica, Texas, the massive rocket took off.
However, mere minutes after launch, the rocket erupted in mid-air, resulting in debris raining down on the launch site.
Monday’s countdown was cancelled due to a blocked valve; Thursday’s launch was the second attempt after that.
Given the size and complexity of the vehicle, SpaceX founder Elon Musk warned reporters on Sunday that the chances of success were low and that merely clearing the launch pad gantry and achieving separation of the first and second stages would be considered a successful test flight.
“Starship is the biggest rocket ever made,” he said. “It’s over twice the thrust of a Saturn 5, the Saturn 5 moon rocket, which is largest rocket ever to get to orbit, it’s roughly twice the mass. So, we’ve got 33 engines on the booster, we’ve got six engines on the upper stage of the ship. It’s a lot of engines.
“So I guess I would just like to set expectations low. If we get far enough away from the launch pad before something goes wrong, then I think I would consider that to be a success. Just don’t blow up the launch pad.”
Musk tweeted a positive message after events unfolded: “Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.”
The FAA issued SpaceX a launch licence on Friday after more than 500 days of painstaking analysis, environmental impact assessments, public comment, and government-mandated mitigations to minimise the impact of launch — or catastrophic failure — on public health, property, and the coastal environment near the Boca Chica launch site.
During the Starship launch, equipment was on board to transmit telemetry to SpaceX and the FAA, providing investigators with a detailed record of the rocket’s performance up until the instant something went wrong.
The FAA official stated that the agency will investigate any such incident “to verify that there were no public safety requirements that were not complied with, and that there is a robust investigation underway to get to the root cause of the mishap,” the FAA official said.
Starship
Starship consists of a 230-foot-tall Starship “Super Heavy” first stage propelled by 33 methane-burning Raptor engines and a bullet-shaped, 160-foot-tall Starship second stage with six Raptor engines and steerable fins at the nose and tail to control the ship during atmospheric re-entry from space. Together, the two stages can propel 100 tonnes into low-Earth orbit.
Both stages are designed to be completely reusable, landing on rockets for refurbishment and relaunch. For the initial test flight, SpaceX did not intend to attempt the recovery of either stage.
Source: SpaceX
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