On Thursday, SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, had its first test flight from a launchpad in South Texas. However, it exploded midair before stage separation. The Super Heavy rocket booster, which has 33 engines, lifted off and caused a loud boom as it fired up.
The Starship spacecraft, which was on top of the booster, flew out over the Gulf of Mexico. Despite the excitement of the flight test, the Starship experienced a sudden and unexpected destruction before separating from the booster. SpaceX tweeted about the incident, referring to it as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
During the test flight, the Super Heavy rocket booster was supposed to use up most of its fuel and separate from the Starship spacecraft about two and a half minutes after liftoff. The booster would have been discarded in the ocean while the Starship used its own engines for more than six minutes to propel itself to almost orbital speeds. The flight reached a height of 24.2 miles (39 kilometers) before the explosion occurred around four minutes after takeoff, as reported by SpaceX.
Multiple engines of the vehicle failed during the flight test, causing a loss of altitude and tumbling. As a result, the flight termination system was activated on both the booster and the ship. This information was shared in an update from SpaceX.
SpaceX plans to review the data from the test flight and continue working towards the next one, despite the failure. The road and beach around the launch site are expected to remain closed until Friday. According to a statement by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), an anomaly occurred during the ascent and before stage separation, leading to the loss of the vehicle. However, there were no reports of injuries or damage to public property.
The FAA will oversee the investigation of the mishap, and a return to flight of the Starship/Super Heavy vehicle will only happen after the FAA confirms that there are no system, process, or procedure issues related to the mishap that would compromise public safety. This is a standard practice in all mishap investigations.
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