The SpaceX Starship rocket exploded about four minutes after launch on Thursday after five of its 33 Raptor engines failed and the spacecraft began to spin.
It’s not yet known what went wrong and it was unclear if all 33 Raptors were firing at launch. The rocket blew up at about 127,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico. Engineers are analyzing data.
Starship is a reusable rocket larger and far more powerful than NASA’s Artemis Special Launch System and one that could take humans to the moon and Mars.
The launch, with no one aboard, was the second attempt to fly the combined Starship spacecraft and its 33-engine Super Heavy booster.
Together, the two stages are designated Starship. The first test, on Monday, was postponed because of a fueling problem.
Despite explosions and crashes of this and earlier prototypes, Starship is poised to capture the world’s imagination when it soars into orbit. NASA has picked Starship to land astronauts on the moon for at least two Artemis missions.
The space vehicle has two stages: The upper stage, with its distinctive fins, is Starship. Super Heavy is the first stage, or the booster. It has 33 Raptor engines capable of producing 16.7 million pounds of thrust. Starship has six Raptors.
Both Starship and Super Heavy will soft-land and be reused in future flights. In Thursday’s test, however, the plan was for both to land in the ocean.
After four failures, the Starship stage launched and landed safely in May 2021 after a 6-mile-high flight. Thursday’s test was the first flight attempt for a Super Heavy stage.
As planned, Thursday’s test flight would have lasted about 90 minutes, according to the flight plan filed with the FAA. The rocket launched from Orbital Launch Pad A in the SpaceX site called Starbase, near Boca Chica Beach on the southern tip of Texas on the Gulf Coast.
About 170 seconds after launch, the Super Heavy booster stage would have separated from the Starship stage. The booster would have landed in the Gulf of Mexico about 20 miles offshore.
Starship would have continued between the Florida Straits, reach altitude of 150 miles, then splashed down about 62 miles off the northeast coast of the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
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SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Associated Press; NASA; spacex.com; space.com