Elon Musk’s SpaceX spacecraft was captured on camera exploding and falling back down to Earth in its second failed attempt this year to deploy mock satellites.
Sadly, it wasn’t second time lucky this year for SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft which – not even 10 minutes after taking off from Starbase in Texas yesterday (March 3) at 5.30pm CT – came into problems, ended up losing contact with ground control and bursting into pieces.
The flight test was Starship’s eighth test overall but second attempt to deploy mock satellites this year and SpaceX’s website released a report later in the day reflecting on the test.
It explained the Super Heavy booster ‘successfully lit its 33 Raptor engines and propelled Starship through a nominal first-stage ascent’ and ‘approximately two and a half minutes into flight, the Super Heavy booster shutdown all but three of its Raptor engines as planned for hot-staging separation’.
However, despite the Super Heavy booster successfully relighting 11 of 13 planned Raptor engines and performing a ‘boostback burn to return itself to the launch site,’ its ascent then took a turn.
The report details: “Prior to the end of the ascent burn, an energetic event in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines. This in turn led to a loss of attitude control and ultimately a loss of communications with Starship.”
This also led to the vehicle experiencing ‘a rapid unscheduled disassembly’ and also loss of contact with ground control, the report adding: “Final contact with Starship came approximately nine minutes and 30 seconds after liftoff.”
The failure ended up briefly grounding flights from some Florida airports, including those in Miami and Orlando, the BBC reports.
Footage posted on social media appears to show people in the Bahamas spotting the debris disintegrating in the sky above them, with some adding they were taking shelter.
And the failure was captured by various social media users, one video shared to Twitter showing lit up debris flying back down to Earth, the caption reading: “If NASA had the failure rate SpaceX does, Elon Musk would be firing everyone and Congress would be demanding to know where the money is going.”
It’s site reassured the spacecraft ‘flew within a designated launch corridor to safeguard the public both on the ground, on water, and in the air’.
SpaceX ‘immediately began coordination with the FAA, ATO (air traffic control) and other safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses’.
“Any surviving debris would have fallen within the pre-planned Debris Response Area. There are no toxic materials present in the debris and no significant impacts expected to occur to marine species or water quality,” it added – should anyone identify any potential debris, they are asked to contact their local authorities.
SpaceX resolved: “We will review the data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause. As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship’s reliability.
“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability. We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests.”