Thursday was SpaceX’s seventh test flight of its huge Super Heavy-Starship giant rocket. The company was able to “catch” the first stage booster back at its firing stand, but it lost its new-generation Starship upper stage spacecraft, which apparently broke apart on its way to space. Federal officials say that falling pieces of the destroyed Starship temporarily slowed down flights leaving Miami, Florida.
After the launch, eight minutes and 27 seconds, the Starship’s telemetry stopped working because the engines stopped working or shut down without warning. Later, SpaceX stated that the ship had been destroyed in a post on X that used a joking phrase:
“While it was in ascent burn, Starship quickly and unplanned disassembled.” Teams are still going over the data from today’s flight test to get a better idea of what went wrong. When we pass a test like this, it’s because we learnt something, and today’s flight will help us make Starship safe.
At one point, a SpaceX launch commentator said, “We lost all communications with the ship.” “That is essentially telling us we had an anomaly with the upper stage.” He stated right away, “We did lose the upper stage.”
The Federal Aviation Administration also said that a “rocket launch anomaly” caused jet traffic at Miami International and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International airports to be held up for up to an hour.
In a statement, the FAA said that it “temporarily slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where spacecraft debris was falling.” It said that things were back to normal.
They said in a follow-up statement, “The FAA is aware that something strange happened during the SpaceX Starship Flight 7 mission that took off from Boca Chica, Texas, on January 16.” They also said that they are “assessing the operation.”
A video shared on social media and confirmed by CBS News showed pieces of the Starship crashing in the Caribbean, near the Turks and Caicos Islands.Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX, later gave a hint at a possible cause. He wrote on his X platform, “Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure above the vent capacity.” In addition to looking again for leaks, we will likely add fire suppression to that volume and make the vent area bigger.
In a news release, SpaceX said “initial data indicates a fire developed in the aft section of the ship, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly with debris falling into the Atlantic Ocean within the predefined hazard areas.”
If someone finds what they think is space junk, SpaceX says they should call the police or the company’s trash hotline at 1-866-623-0234.
At 5:37 p.m. Eastern Time, the huge rocket took off from SpaceX’s manufacturing and flight test site in Boca Chica, Texas, on the Gulf Coast. It had 33 Raptor engines burning methane, which could produce up to 16 million pounds of thrust.
The booster gained height by consuming 40,000 pounds of propellant per second. It then elegantly curved to the east atop a long jet of flaming exhaust that could be seen for many miles.
Two minutes and forty seconds after launch, the Super Heavy separated from the Starship. The Starship’s six Raptor engines continued to power its ascent into space.
While this was going on, the lifter turned around, started up several engines again, and turned back towards Boca Chica, where the special mechanical arms on the rocket’s launch gantry were ready and open.
The Super Heavy’s engines were turned back on as it fell back to Earth, tilting as it was guided to the pad. It then settled straight down between the chopsticks, which closed easily to catch its prey in the air.
The first successful catch of this kind happened in October of last year, which stunned and amazed thousands of locals and tourists. But the next of these flights, a month later, used a different Super Heavy. It was sent to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico because launch damage had damaged sensors on the tower that were needed to help guide the falling booster into place.
To stop this kind of damage, new sensors with stronger shielding were put in place, and SpaceX engineers are hopeful that they’ll soon be able to recover Super Heavy boosters as regularly as they’ve done with the company’s mainstay Falcon 9 rockets. This is a key part of SpaceX’s plan to lower launch costs.
In line with the idea of reusability, one of the Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines had already been used on a test flight to show that it could fly more than one mission.
What SpaceX called a “new generation” Starship was used for most of the tests on Thursday. Beyond two minutes after the rocket “landed,” the upper stage was in space.
They didn’t know what might have happened in the last few minutes of the climb because they lost the data.
The Starships don’t try to get to orbit on these first test trips. Instead, they go around the Earth twice and then drop belly-first through a fiery blaze of air friction. They then flip their noses up and land tail-first in the Indian Ocean using rocket power.
On Thursday’s flight, two of the main test goals were to restart a Raptor engine in space and put 10 fake Starlinks into orbit to test a new method for delivering satellites that works like a Pez dispenser. Once the rocket is working, thousands of Starlinks will be sent into space by starships.
The smaller stabilising fins were moved to a different position to protect them from the heat of re-entry. The propulsion avionics system was also improved, and the fuel feed lines were modified. The propellant volume was also increased by 25% to improve performance.
It has a stronger flight computer, new antennas that mix signals from Starlink and GPS navigation satellites, “smart batteries” and power units to run twenty-two high-voltage actuators, and navigation sensors that have been redesigned.
SpaceX also added more cameras, bringing the total number on board to over 30. These cameras will provide direct views of important systems by using working Starlink satellites to send video and data to Earth in real time.
SpaceX has not yet tried to catch a returning Starship or, for that matter, a Falcon 9 upper stage, even though the spacecraft is meant to be fully reusable.
But Thursday’s test flight included several tests of different heat shield improvements, such as steel tiles, one with active cooling, and fake Starship catch fittings, to find out how they will react to the heat of re-entry.
“This new year will be transformational for Starship,” SpaceX said on its site, “with the goal of bringing reuse of the entire system online and flying increasingly ambitious missions as we iterate towards being able to send humans and cargo to Earth orbit, the moon, and Mars.”
For NASA’s Artemis moon program to work, the Super Heavy-Starship needs to be able to fly regularly. NASA is paying SpaceX to make a version of the Starship upper stage that will take people to the moon’s surface in 2027.
SpaceX has to first send a Starship into low-Earth orbit. There, a series of other Starship “tankers” will have to meet up, join, and refuel the moon-bound ship so it can blast off from Earth orbit and head for deep space.
Astronauts will be launched on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket in an Orion capsule. They will then meet up with the Starship in orbit around the moon to make their way to the surface.
As part of NASA’s deal, one test flight without a pilot must be done before astronauts can be given permission to ride one back to Earth. When that might be possible will depend on the current test program.
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