Starship – The enormous spacecraft that Elon Musk says will take people to Mars one day – failed during the last test flight on Thursday when the upper phase exploded in space, raining debris and disturbing air traffic at airports from Florida to Pennsylvania.
It was the second consecutive test flight of the most powerful rocket ever built where the upper stage spacecraft storted. It started to turn out of hand after different engines went out and then lost contact with Mission Control.
Photos and videos on the social media site X by users who said they were along the coast of Florida showed the spacecraft apart. The falling debris disturbed flights at airports in Miami, Orlando, Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, and as far away as Philadelphia International Airport.
The Starship Rocket system is the largest ever built. On 403 feet, it is almost 100 feet longer than the statue of liberty on top of its pedestal.
It has most engines ever in a rocket booster: the super heavy booster is powered by 33 Raptor engines from SpaceX. While those engines lift the starry of the launch platform, they will generate 16 million pounds of thrusts with full gas valve.
The upper part, also called short -round or in short, looks like a shiny rocket from science fiction films of the 1950s, is made of stainless steel with large fins. This is the upper stage that goes to a job and can eventually bring people to the moon or even Mars.
The rocket lifted on Thursday a little after 6.30 pm Eastern Time of the SpaceX site that is known as Starbase in the southern point of Texas near the city of Brownsville.
Starship's Mammoth Booster again returned to the Launchpad again, just like during the previous test flight. In the last half minute before the upper phase engines were to be eliminated, several of them did not work. Video from the rocket showed a tumbling view of earth and space until it was cut.
In an update on the SpaceX website, the company said: “Prior to the end of the Ascent Burn, an energetic event resulted in the rear part of the spaceship in the loss of various Raptor engines. This in turn led to a loss of posture control and ultimately a loss of communication with spaceship. “
Communication with the spacecraft ended 9 minutes and 30 seconds after the launch, said SpaceX.
The company said that it immediately coordinated with safety officers “to implement in advance planned unforeseen responses.”
Shortly after the spacecraft broke up, the Federal Aviation Administration gave land attacks for the airports. It mentioned “Space launch debris” as the reasons in each of the cases.
Some airlines said that the effects of the incident were limited on Thursday evening.
“We had some minor consequences for our operation in South Florida, but things are back on the right track,” said Southwest Airlines in a statement.
The FAA said the Starship was thorough until SpaceX had completed an investigation of Thursday's incident.
It was the eighth test flight for the rocket. During the previous test flight in January, the first part of the launch went smoothly, with all 33 engines of the booster that lift the rocket to space. The booster also separated well, and the six engines of the second phase spacecraft inflamed and pushed it up.
But something went wrong and the air traffic had to be diverted over the Caribbean and delayed around falling debris, some of which landed on the Turks and Caicos Islands.
In the first six tests, SpaceX showed that the basic design of the rocket works and that the spaceship can almost return to Earth intact. In the coming year, SpaceX wants to improve “more or less” to “reliable” and to prove other options. This year the company will probably receive approval of the FAA for a maximum of 25 flights.
De FAA tries to circumvent conflicts of interest with Mr. Musk and SpaceX.
Last month, the agency hired three SpaceX employees to work temporarily to help the agency upgrade the air traffic control system of the agency and other technology.
But ethical letters sent to the three employees claim that they “do not have access to systems” on the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, the part of the FAA that SpaceX regulates.
The downfall of the previous spaceship was probably caused by stronger than expected shaking when the rocket vibrated like an organ pipe, concluded SpaceX's investigation. The vibrations caused leaks of floating gas that inflamed.
According to the company's analysis, the self -destruction system blew up the rocket a few minutes later.
In order to tackle the problems during the seventh flight, the company said that fodder lines that carried drifting gas to the engines were changed to reduce the oscillations. SpaceX also changed the floating temperatures and thrust levels of the engines to prevent a repetition of the leaks.
For the rocket on this flight, SpaceX has also added more ventilation openings to the attic section and a system to purify the area of floating gases to reduce the risk of fires.
De FAA supervised the investigation of SpaceX and issued a launch license for the eighth flight last week.
Scott Ferguson, 43, a neuroscientist and amateur astronomer who was enthusiastic, positioned the flight, positioned himself with a telescope in a parking lot near his house in Sarasota, Fla.
At about 6:40 pm he saw a large cloud suddenly appear through his telescope. A few seconds later he said that he saw a large part of the body of the vessel “surrounded by metal debris that looked like stars that sparkled around it.”
A few minutes later, Mr. Ferguson said he heard a loud bang that reminded him of the Sonic Booms he heard growing up in Titusville, Fla., Near Nasa's Kennedy Space Center. Extra trees followed about 10 minutes later.
Starship is not the only rocket that is flown by SpaceX who has had recent problems. Some of the Falcon 9 rackets that launch it every few days from Florida and California have also had problems.
During a launch in February, a top stage of Falcon 9 did not succeed in carrying out the usual motorcycle fire to ensure that the remains of the rocket in the ocean would splash. Instead, it remained in a job around the earth. Air resistance ensured that it gradually decreased and the stage came again 18 days later in the atmosphere across Europe. Nobody was injured or injured, but pieces of the rocket seem to have landed in Poland.
SpaceX experienced another problem on Sunday evening when a Falcon 9 booster successfully landed on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean, but then fell.
The company reported that “an off-nominal fire in the rear end of the rocket damaged one of the landing legs of the booster that led to it struck about it.”
NASA plans to use a version of Starship to bring astronauts from Lunar Orbit to the surface of the moon during his Artemis III mission, currently planned for 2027.
But that mission can be delayed or even canceled, if the Trump administration renews the Moon program or shifts his attention to Mars.
SpaceX must demonstrate a high reliability of the spaceship before a flight with people on board takes place.
Hank Sanders” Niraj Chokshi And Eric Lipton contributed reporting.
