SSpaceX's massive rocket Starship explodes 4 minutes after liftoff

 SSpaceX's massive rocket Starship explodes 4 minutes after liftoff

SSpaceX's massive rocket Starship explodes 4 minutes after liftoff

During its inaugural test flight on Thursday, SpaceX's Starship rocket successfully lifted off from its launch platform, but encountered a setback when it failed to separate from its booster. Approximately four minutes after liftoff, the uncrewed spacecraft, which has the potential to support life on multiple planets, exploded. Prior to the malfunction, the rocket had been scheduled to complete a 90-minute journey around Earth, culminating in a splashdown near Hawaii. However, once the rocket reached MaxQ, it began to spin in the air and eventually plummeted to the ground before completely combusting. A livestream of the launch indicated that some of the rocket's 39 engines may have malfunctioned.

According to John Insprucker, SpaceX's principal integration engineer, the Starship rocket experienced a "rapid, unscheduled disassembly," which the company refers to as an explosion. Despite this setback, SpaceX staff cheered during the incident. The successful launch of the 400-foot-tall rocket from the launch pad is still considered a significant achievement towards its long-term goal of transporting humans to the moon and Mars. In a tweet, SpaceX stated that the test provided valuable insights to improve Starship's reliability as they strive to support life on multiple planets. "Success comes from what we learn," the company added.

According to SpaceX, the debris resulting from the Starship rocket explosion was anticipated to have landed in the Gulf of Mexico. The company will collaborate with local authorities to execute recovery operations. CEO Elon Musk announced that the team plans to conduct another rocket test in the upcoming months

In a tweet, NASA administrator Bill Nelson expressed excitement for the potential of future Starship launches, recognizing that every significant accomplishment in history has required some degree of calculated risk. NASA has a financial stake in the success of Starship, as it has commissioned SpaceX to create a reusable moon shuttle, though this project is not expected to be ready for several years. The Raptor engine, a new and powerful design, could potentially enable Starship to endure multiple launches. However, there have been a few initial failures in demonstration tests. Recently, a launch scheduled for Monday was called off at the last minute due to a frozen valve in the booster. On Thursday, the flight crew halted operations with just 40 seconds left on the countdown clock, citing issues with the booster's pressurization.

According to Paulo Lozano, director of MIT's space propulsion laboratory, using 33 booster engines in the Starship rocket is a necessary trade-off for lifting payloads as heavy as 250 tons. However, having such a high number of engines firing simultaneously poses significant difficulties. Lozano believes this will be one of the most substantial challenges in developing the rocket. In addition, the choice of methane as fuel adds to the complexity of the project. SpaceX chose to experiment with methane because it is less expensive to produce and simpler to handle than hydrogen, the typical fuel choice for high-powered rockets.

Using methane as fuel in the Starship rocket requires the oxidizer, oxygen, to be chilled to very low temperatures, which caused the valve to freeze during the aborted test launch on Monday. SpaceX's quality systems engineer, Kate Tice, commended the countdown team for identifying the issue and said the team had learned valuable lessons in the last 48 hours. The company has a history of blowing up rockets during testing, but it believes this approach has been successful in the long term. The success of Starship is critical to SpaceX's future, as the company plans to use the rocket to launch its Starlink Internet satellites and potentially send several hundred per launch in the future.