Starship prototype, Spacex rocket designed by Elon Musk for moon and Mars missions, exploded on Tuesday during the final minutes of a flight test over the Indian Ocean. The ship had taken off from the company’s base in southern Texas at 6:36 pm (8:36 pm GMT), but could not complete the mission.
Super Heavy, the first stage of the rocket, also failed to perform its scheduled landing in the Gulf of Mexico. Already the upper stage, which would follow to the landing zone near the Australian coast, presented fuel leakage and lost directional control, which led to the shutdown of the cameras around 45 minutes after takeoff.
Spacex speaks of “Unchecked quick disassembly”
The company recognized the failure with a technical euphemism: “Starship has suffered a quick unchecked disassembly,” Spacex said on network X, emphasizing that the test will bring learning for the next attempts.
Musk, in turn, minimized failure and announced that new flights should occur more often: “The launch pace of the next three flights will be faster, approximately one every three or four weeks,” he said.
This was the ninth test mission of the Starship coupled to the super heavy propeller. Despite going beyond previous flights, the test ended again with total ship loss. This time, Spacex chose not to recover the propeller, which had already been reused, and performed experimental maneuvers, such as the shutdown of an engine and a more pronounced descent angle.
Still, the company has celebrated Super Heavy’s successful recovery in other tests, using robotic arms to capture it in the launch tower-Operation seen as crucial to enabling rapid reuse and cost reduction.
Program is central to musk and NASA plans
With 123 meters high, the Starship is considered the largest rocket ever built. The project is fundamental for Spacex’s plans to make humanity multiplanetary, and also for NASA, which will use a ship variant as a landing module of the Artemis 3 mission, expected to bring astronauts back to the moon.
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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recently authorized Spacex to expand from five to 25 the annual Starship release number.
The decision considered that the increase would not bring significant risks to the environment, even in the face of protests of conservation groups, which warn of the impacts on turtles and sea birds.
