[ad_1]
WASHINGTON: A prototype of SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded during a landing attempt minutes after an experimental high-altitude launch from Boca Chica, Texas, on Tuesday (February 2), in a repeat of an accident that destroyed a test rocket. previous.
The Starship SN9 that exploded on its final descent, like the SN8 before it, was a test model of the heavy-lift rocket being developed by billionaire businessman Elon Musk’s private space company to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on future missions. to the United States. Moon and Mars.
The 16-story tall self-guided rocket initially soared into the clear blue skies of South Texas from its Gulf Coast launch pad in what appeared to be a flawless liftoff from SpaceX’s live broadcast coverage.
SpaceX launches Starship SN9 for a test flight from its facilities in Boca Chica, Texas, on February 2, 2021. (Photo: REUTERS / Gene Blevins)
Reaching its maximum altitude of about 10 kilometers, the spacecraft momentarily hovered in the air, shut down its engines, and executed a planned “buckling” maneuver to descend nose-down under aerodynamic control back to Earth.
The problem came when the spacecraft, after flipping its nose up again to begin its landing sequence, tried to reactivate two of its three Raptor thrusters, but one did not ignite. The rocket then quickly fell to the ground in a roaring ball of flame, smoke and debris, 6 minutes and 26 seconds after launch. No injuries were reported.
The Starship SN8, the first prototype to fly a high-altitude test launch, met a similar fate in December.
A SpaceX commentator for Tuesday’s launch webcast said the rocket’s flight at its test altitude, along with most of the spacecraft’s subsonic reentry, “looked very good and stable, as we saw last December.” .
“We just have to do a little work on that landing,” said the commentator, adding: “This is a test flight, the second time we’ve flown Starship in this configuration.
He said SpaceX engineers would thoroughly analyze the data collected from the test to determine what went wrong, and “we will be back with another spacecraft in the near future.”
There was no immediate comment from Musk, who also runs electric car maker Tesla Inc and tweeted early Tuesday, hours before SpaceX’s test launch, that he planned to take a Twitter hiatus “for a while.”
The full Starship rocket, which will stand 120 meters tall when docked with its super-heavy first-stage booster, is the company’s next-generation fully reusable launch vehicle, the center of Musk’s ambitions to make travel human spacecraft are more affordable and routine.
The rocket system is partially funded by NASA and could end up being offered to the US military.
A first Starship orbital flight is planned for later this year, and Musk has said he intends to fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon and back with Starship in 2023.
