Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship explodes, debris streaks through Florida skies

SpaceX’s massive Starship spacecraft exploded in space on Thursday (Friday AEDT) minutes after lifting off from Texas, in the second straight failure this year for Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.

Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship broke up in space shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX live stream of the mission showed.

The failure of the eighth Starship test comes just over a month after the seventh also ended in an explosive failure. The back-to-back mishaps occurred in early mission phases that SpaceX has easily surpassed previously, a setback for a program Musk has sought to speed up this year.

The 123-metre rocket system is central to Musk’s plan to send humans to Mars as soon as the turn of the decade.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) briefly issued ground stops at the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Orlando airports because of “space launch debris”. It said it had opened a mishap investigation into the incident.

The rocket lifted off about 6.30pm Thursday ET (10.30am Friday AEDT) from SpaceX’s sprawling Boca Chica, Texas, rocket facilities. The Super Heavy first-stage booster flew back to earth as planned and was successfully grabbed in midair by a SpaceX crane.

But minutes later, SpaceX’s live stream showed the Starship upper stage spinning in space, while a visualisation of the rocket’s engines showed multiple engines shut down. Then the company said it had lost contact with the ship, and announcers immediately drew a connection to the previous flight.

“Unfortunately, this happened last time too, so we’ve got some practice now,” SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said on the live stream.

It was not immediately clear whether the explosion was caused by SpaceX’s automated flight termination system, which triggers when something on the rocket goes wrong. The ship showed signs of failure before its explosion.

SpaceX described the failure in technical terms.

“During Starship’s ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost,” SpaceX said in a statement. “Our team immediately began co-ordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses.”

The Starship failure in January ended eight minutes into flight when the rocket exploded, raining debris over Caribbean islands and causing minor damage to a car in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The FAA, which regulates private rocket launches, said its investigation would require SpaceX to examine the failure’s cause and get the agency’s sign-off before Starship could fly again.

The FAA last month approved SpaceX’s launch licence for Thursday’s test flight while its investigation into the company’s previous Starship failure remained open. In doing so, the FAA said it had reviewed SpaceX’s licence application and early details from the company’s mishap investigation before determining that Starship’s eighth flight could proceed.

Starship was aiming to make nearly a full orbit around earth and re-enter over the Indian Ocean for a splashdown, simulating a landing sequence that SpaceX wants to soon carry out on land as a key next phase of the rocket’s development.

Reuters

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