by Air traffic was disturbed in Florida when a SpaceX Starship, a prototype of the spacecraft that, according to Elon Musk, one day brings people to Mars, failed during the last test flight.
For the second consecutive time, the upper phase of the most powerful rocket ever was poorly built. It started to turn out of hand after different engines went out and then lost contact with Mission Control.
Photos and videos on the social media site X by users who said they were along the coast of Florida showed signs of the spacecraft that fell apart in the air.
On Thursday evening, two major airports in Florida Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Miami International Airport-with no less than 45 minutes were delayed due to “Space launch debris,” said the Federal Aviation Administration.
Deviations from Philadelphia International Airport were delayed by 30 minutes due to the launch of the space, De FAA reported.
In a message on the X website, SpaceX described what happened in a statement.
“During the rise in Starship, the vehicle had a rapid unplanned dismantling and the contact lost,” the company said. “Our team immediately started coordination with safety officers to implement in advance planned unforeseen responses.”
The rocket raised on his eighth test flight a bit after 6.30 pm east of the SpaceX launch location known as Starbase in the southern point of Texas near the city of Brownsville.
The launch was planned for Monday evening, but the countdown stopped with about 30 seconds to go when some sensor values were not completely correct. A few minutes later the launch attempt was declared.
After a few days of repairs, the company said that Starship was ready to try again with what would largely be an overdoors of seventh flight, which was launched in January.
The Starship Rocket system is the largest ever built. On 403 feet, it is almost 100 feet longer than the statue of liberty on top of its pedestal.
It has most engines ever in a rocket booster: the super heavy booster is powered by 33 Raptor engines from SpaceX. While those engines lift the starry of the launch platform, they will generate 16 million pounds of thrusts with full gas valve.
The upper part, also called short -round or in short, looks like a shiny rocket from science fiction films of the 1950s, is made of stainless steel with large fins. This is the upper stage that goes to a job and can eventually bring people to the moon or even Mars.
In six tests before the seventh flight, SpaceX showed that the basic design of the rocket and the spaceship can return almost intact to the earth. In the coming year, SpaceX wants to improve “more or less” to “reliable” and to prove other options. This year the company will probably receive approval from the Federal Aviation Administration for a maximum of 25 flights.
During the seventh test flight of the rocket, the first part of the launch went smoothly, with all 33 engines of the booster that lift the rocket to the room. The booster also separated well, and the six engines of the second phase spacecraft inflamed and pushed it up. But something went wrong and the air traffic had to be diverted over the Caribbean and delayed around falling debris, some of which landed on the Turks and Caicos Islands.
About two minutes after the flight of the upper stage, a flash took place near the back of the spacecraft near one of the engines, SpaceX said. The company calls this area the ‘Zolder’.
Sensors registered an increase in the pressure indicating a leak, said SpaceX.
Two minutes later a flash was followed by fires in the attic, so that all engines were closed except for one. Telemetry of the spacecraft ended eight minutes 20 seconds after the launch.
SpaceX said that the likely cause was stronger than expected rhythmic oscillations. The vibrations caused leaks of floating gas that could not be completely vented from the attic, which led to the fires.
SpaceX said that according to his analysis, the self -destruction system blew up the rocket a few minutes later.
In order to tackle the problems during the eight flight, the company said that fodder lines that carried drifting gas to the engines were changed to reduce the oscillations. SpaceX also changed the floating temperatures and thrust levels of the engines to prevent a repetition of the leaks.
For the rocket on this flight, SpaceX has also added more ventilation openings to the attic section and a system to purify the area of floating gases to reduce the risk of fires.
De FAA supervised SpaceX’s investigation into what went wrong during the seventh test flight and it issued a launch license for the eighth flight on Friday.
On Thursday, Starship’s Mammoth Booster, or the bottom of the rocket, returned to the launch platform again, just like during the previous test flight. It was the third successful catch of the booster due to large mechanical arms on the launch tower that get the nickname ‘chopsticks’.
This time, in the last half minute before the upper phase engines were to be eliminated, several of them did not work. Video from the rocket showed a tumbling view of earth and space until it was cut.
Moments later, commentators on the live stream of SpaceX said that Telemetry of Starship was lost.
SpaceX recently had glitches with some of the Falcon 9 rackets that launch it every few days from Florida and California.
During a launch in February, a top stage of Falcon 9 did not succeed in carrying out the usual motorcycle fire to ensure that the remains of the rocket in the ocean would splash. Instead, it remained in a job around the earth. Air resistance ensured that it gradually decreased and the stage came again 18 days later in the atmosphere across Europe. Nobody was injured or injured, but pieces of the rocket seem to have landed in Poland.
SpaceX experienced another problem on Sunday evening when a Falcon 9 booster successfully landed on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean, but then fell.
The company reported that “an off-nominal fire in the rear end of the rocket damaged one of the landing legs of the booster that led to it struck about it.”
NASA plans to use a version of Starship to bring astronauts from Lunar Orbit to the surface of the moon during his Artemis III mission, currently planned for 2027.
But that mission can be delayed or even canceled, if the Trump administration renews the Moon program or shifts his attention to Mars.
SpaceX must demonstrate a high reliability of the spaceship before a flight with people on board takes place.
Hank Sanders contributed reporting.
