Seven weeks after an explosion sent pieces of a SpaceX Starship launch vehicle falling into the Atlantic, the company again launched its largest and most powerful rocket on Thursday before losing contact with the mega rocket after it lost several engines.
The more than 400-foot Starship, powered by a super heavy booster with 33 Raptor engines, lifted off successfully at 6:30 pm ET from SpaceX’s launchpad at its Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas. But about nine minutes into the mission, the ship began spinning out of control. Several of its engines flamed out, and mission control lost contact with the craft.
No astronauts were aboard the spacecraft. SpaceX discontinued its video feed of the launch without providing a location for the craft or where debris might land.
In a post on X, SpaceX said the vehicle “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly” and contact was lost.
“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.
Ground stops were issued at Orlando International Airport, Palm Beach, Miami and Fort Lauderdale on Thursday evening due to space launch debris.
According to the company, this flight test was designed to push the Starship’s capabilities further than previous attempts. The mission was supposed to include Starship’s first payload deployment and multiple reentry experiments to get SpaceX closer to bringing the upper stage back to the launch site for an eventual catch. That would make Starship a completely reusable spacecraft. The company says the ship is designed for vertical takeoff and landing on any hard surface.
Unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which has been flying with a partially reusable design for years, Starship is designed to be fully reusable and capable of carrying crew and cargo on long-duration interplanetary missions.
SpaceX says Starship can also carry larger payloads, such as satellites and cargo, than other launch vehicles currently in use and can support long-duration missions to the Moon and potentially Mars.
The company says the spacecraft will eventually be capable of carrying up to 100 people on long-duration interplanetary flights.
While the Starship was lost, Thursday’s mission included the successful return and catch of the Super Heavy booster — one of the most technically challenging aspects of the mission.
That super heavy first-stage booster executed a controlled descent back to the launch tower, slowing down from supersonic speeds before being caught by the launch tower’s giant robotic arms. The return and catch of the first-stage booster is considered one of the most challenging aspects of the mission.
This marks the third time SpaceX has returned and caught the stage on booster using the launch tower.
In January, SpaceX also lost a Starship spacecraft after mission control announced that it had lost all communications with the spacecraft eight and a half minutes after it blasted off. Debris from the launch vehicle was later seen falling over Turks & Caicos in the Atlantic. The company believes stronger than anticipated vibrations led to propellent leaks, causing the ship to catch fire. The FAA slowed flights in and around Florida for a time because of concerns about debris damaging an aircraft.
For Thursday’s test mission, SpaceX said they incorporated several key upgrades to Starship, including redesigned forward flaps to reduce exposure to reentry heating, a 25% increase in propellant capacity, allowing for longer-duration missions and better performance, and a fully overhauled avionics system to improve reliability, for complex operations.
They also removed some of the ship’s protective heat tiles to stress-test vulnerable parts of Starship during reentry while testing several variations of metallic tiles designed to protect the vehicle from the extreme heat when returning to Earth.
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