Breaking Down the Failure: What Really Happened to SpaceX’s Starship Rocket
Watch The Moment Elon Musk’s Starship Exploded During Test Flight
Billionaire Elon Musk’s iconic Starship rocket, the largest and most powerful ever built, designed to send astronauts to the moon and Mars and beyond, exploded Thursday during the spacecraft’s first test flight. Mr Musk said the next test of the starship would be in a few months.
Minutes after SpaceX congratulated itself on the “exciting first Starship integrated flight test,” the company tweeted that the rocket had “experienced a rapid unplanned disassembly prior to stage separation.”
At the three-minute mark, commentators indicated a problem with the test flight. The rocket began to rotate into the separation stage, and the spinning rocket could be seen on SpaceX’s live feed.
The starship was supposed to separate from the superheavy booster, but the rocket continues to spin, commentators said. “It does not appear to be a nominal situation,” said the commentator, after which the rocket exploded in the sky.
The gigantic rocket successfully lifted off at 8:33 a.m. CET (1333 GMT) from Starbase, SpaceX’s private spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas. The Starship capsule was supposed to separate from the first stage rocket booster three minutes into flight, but separation did not occur and the rocket exploded.
Despite failing to complete the full flight test, SpaceX declared it a success. “We cleared the tower, which was our only hope,” said Kate Tice, a SpaceX quality systems engineer.
“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help improve starship reliability as SpaceX strives to make life multiplanetary,” SpaceX tweeted. “Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting first integrated flight test of a starship!”
After the failed first attempt on Monday, when the giant rocket’s launch was called off just minutes before the scheduled launch time due to a problem with overpressurization in the booster stage, there was a lot of excitement about this launch.
Elon Musk hesitated about the launch. Elon Musk hesitated about the launch. SpaceX’s owner warned before launch that technical problems were likely and sought to lower expectations for the initial test flight.
“It’s a very risky flight,” he said. “It’s the first launch of a very complicated, gigantic rocket. There are a million ways this rocket could fail,” Musk said.
US space agency NASA has selected the Starship spacecraft to carry astronauts to the moon in late 2025 – a mission known as Artemis III – for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.
SpaceX envisions eventually launching a starship into orbit and then refueling it with another starship to continue its journey to Mars or beyond.
The ultimate goal, according to Musk, is to set up bases on the Moon and Mars and put humans “on the path to a multiplanetary civilization.” “We’re at this brief moment in a civilization where it’s possible to become a multiplanetary species,” he said. “That’s our goal. I think we have a chance.”
