The seventh test flight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket failed on Thursday as the vehicle’s upper stage experienced a catastrophic malfunction as it headed upward to space.
SpaceX was able to achieve some success by repeating the feat of catching the gargantuan Super Heavy booster back at the launchpad.
But then data indicated that some of the engines on an upgraded, longer version of the upper stage shut down prematurely. About 8.5 minutes after launch, communications between the ground and the upper-stage vehicle, which is known as Starship, were cut off.
“We can confirm that we did lose the ship,” said Kate Tice, one of the hosts of SpaceX’s video stream of the launch.
Videos posted on the social media site X appeared to show debris raining down from the sky over the Caribbean, likely parts of a disintegrated rocket.
In his own post on X, Mr. Musk shared video footage of the debris and wrote “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”
The Federal Aviation Administration, the agency that regulates commercial spaceflight, said in a statement that it had “briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling.”
Starship is the rocket that Elon Musk, the company’s founder, says will take people to Mars someday. NASA is also paying SpaceX to develop a version of the vehicle to return American astronauts to the moon.
Over the first six test flights, SpaceX has demonstrated that it can launch the largest rocket ever into space and more or less bring the pieces back to Earth intact. Over the coming year, the company is looking to turn “more or less” into “reliably” and prove out other capabilities. SpaceX has requested increasing the maximum allowed number of Starship launches per year from Starbase, its launch site in south Texas, to 25 from five.
Earlier test flights, while not perfect, showed steady progress from one to the next. This seventh flight was the first to not repeat all of the milestones that had been achieved on the previous flight.
The F.A.A. had approved multiple launches of the current Starship configuration and not require investigations of certain failures that could occur during test flights.
However, because the rocket’s failure occurred during ascent, causing a shower of debris, the F.A.A. could require SpaceX to investigate the cause before it allows the next Starship launch.
Liftoff occurred at 5:37 p.m. Eastern time.
After finishing its work pushing the rocket through the thickest part of the atmosphere, the booster dropped away and headed back toward the launchpad. It was then successfully caught by two mechanical arms on the launch tower.
Shortly after that, the trouble with the upper-stage spacecraft occurred, ending what was to have been a one-hour trip to splash down in the Indian Ocean.
What is Starship?
The Starship rocket system is the largest ever built — 403 feet tall, or nearly 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty including the pedestal.
And it has the most engines ever in a rocket booster: The Super Heavy booster — the bottom part of the rocket — has 33 of SpaceX’s powerful Raptor engines sticking out of its bottom. As those engines lift Starship off the launchpad in South Texas, they will generate 16 million pounds of thrust at full throttle.
The upper part, also called Starship or Ship for short, looks like a shiny rocket from a science fiction movie from the 1950s and is made of stainless steel with large fins. This is the upper stage that will head toward orbit, and ultimately could carry people to the moon or even Mars.
What happened during the previous flight?
President-elect Donald J. Trump attended the sixth test flight on Nov. 19, visiting Mr. Musk in the launch control room. The upper Starship flew on a suborbital trajectory halfway around the world, successfully re-entered the atmosphere and performed a landing maneuver, flipping to a vertical position before gently splashing down in the Indian Ocean about an hour after liftoff.
Not unexpectedly, it then tipped over and exploded.
The booster also successfully re-entered the atmosphere. But plans to catch it using — a feat that SpaceX accomplished during the fifth test flight — were called off after sensors on the mechanical arms were damaged during launch. The booster was diverted to the Gulf of Mexico.
What was different about the seventh flight?
For the Starship on this seventh test flight, significant design changes were made to the propulsion, the heat shield and the control systems. The rocket had been stretched several feet taller than earlier Starships — space for bigger tanks that hold 25 percent more propellant. The flaps near the top of Starship were smaller and had been moved toward the tip to reduce damage from the searing temperatures of re-entry.
While in space, Starship was to test a new system that somewhat resembles a PEZ candy dispenser. It would have shot out 10 dummy satellites that were similar in size and shape to the next-generation spacecraft to be deployed for SpaceX’s Starlink internet service. The dummy satellites would have followed Starship’s trajectory and burn up in the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.
When will Starship be able to send people to space?
The failure on Thursday will push back SpaceX’s ambitiously speedy development schedule.
Even before the failure, Starship was likely at least a couple of years away from being ready for crewed missions. NASA is planning to use a version of Starship to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon during its Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for 2027.
Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of the Shift4, a payment services company who has flown twice to space on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, was to take part on the first crewed flight of Starship. But now that he has been selected by Mr. Trump to be the next administrator of NASA, Mr. Isaacman is likely to stay on the ground, at least for now.
Eric Lipton contributed reporting.
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