Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) on Saturday launched its mega rocket Starship, but lost both the booster and the spacecraft in a pair of explosions minutes into the test flight.
The rocket ship reached space following liftoff from south Texas before communication was suddenly lost.
SpaceX officials said it appeared the ship’s self-destruct system blew it up over the Gulf of Mexico.
Photo: AFP
Minutes earlier, the separated booster had exploded over the gulf. By then, its job was already done.
Saturday’s demo lasted about eight minutes, about twice as long as the first test in April, which also ended in an explosion. The latest flight came to an end as the ship’s six engines were almost done firing to put it on an around-the-world path.
At nearly 121m, Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, with the goal of ferrying people to the moon and Mars.
“The real topping on the cake today, that successful liftoff,” SpaceX engineer John Insprucker said, adding that all 33 booster engines fired as designed, unlike last time.
The booster also separated seamlessly from the spaceship, which reached an altitude of 148km.
“We got so much data, and that will all help us to improve for our next flight,” SpaceX quality systems engineer Kate Tice said.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk watched from behind launch controllers at the southern tip of Texas near the Mexico border, near Boca Chica Beach. At the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, employees cheered as Starship soared at daybreak. The room grew quiet once it was clear the spaceship had been destroyed.
SpaceX had been aiming for an altitude of 240km, just high enough to send the bullet-shaped spacecraft around the globe before ditching into the Pacific near Hawaii about one-and-a-half hours after liftoff, short of a full orbit.
Following April’s flight demo, SpaceX made dozens of improvements to the rocket as well as the launch pad. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday cleared the rocket for flight, after confirming that all safety and environmental concerns had been met.
After Saturday’s launch, the FAA said that no injuries or public damage had been reported and that an investigation was under way to determine what went wrong.
SpaceX cannot launch another Starship until the review is complete and corrections made, the FAA added.
NASA is counting on Starship to land astronauts on the moon by the end of 2025 or shortly thereafter. The space agency awarded SpaceX a US$3 billion contract to make it happen, by transferring astronauts from its Orion capsule to Starship in lunar orbit before heading down to the surface.
“Today’s test is an opportunity to learn — then fly again,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
RSS