Spacecraft – A giant spacecraft that Elon Musk will one day bring people to Mars – when it failed during its latest test flight on Thursday, its upper stage exploded in space, raining debris, destroying air traffic at airports from Florida to Pennsylvania.
This was the second consecutive test flight of the most powerful rocket ever built in a location where the upper-stage spacecraft malfunctioned. Some engines disappeared and after losing contact with mission control, they began spinning out of control.
Photos and videos posted on social media site X show users that they were along Florida's coast and that the spacecraft had disbanded. Falling debris destroys flights at airports in Miami, Orlando, Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, making them as far away as Philadelphia International Airport.
The spacecraft rocket system is the largest ever built. It is 403 feet tall and is nearly 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty on the pedestal.
It has the most engines ever in the Rocket Booster. The super heavy booster is powered by SpaceX's 33 Raptor engine. When these engines lift the spacecraft out of the launchpad, they generate 16 million pounds of thrust at full throttle.
The top, also known as a spaceship or ship for short, looks like a shiny rocket from a 1950s science fiction film, but is made from stainless steel with large fins. This is the upper stage heading into orbit, and ultimately can transport people to the moon and even Mars.
The rocket was lifted a little further away from the SpaceX site known as Starbase, located in the southern tip of Texas, near the city of Brownsville, after 6:30pm on Thursday.
The Starship mammoth booster has returned to the launchpad again, just like during the previous test flight. Some of them malfunctioned half before the engine in the upper stage stopped. Video from the rocket showed views of the Earth and space falls until it was blocked off.
In an update posted to SpaceX's website, the company said: “Before Ascent Burn was finished, some Raptor engines were lost due to energetic events in the rear of Starship. This left attitude control and ultimately lost communication with the spacecraft.”
SpaceX said communication with the spacecraft ended 30 seconds nine minutes after the lift-off.
The company said it was immediately coordinated with a safety officer “to implement a pre-planned emergency response.”
Shortly after the spacecraft was disbanded, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an order to halt the airport ground. We cited “Space Launch Shrinks” as the reason for each case.
Some airlines said the impact of the incident was limited to Thursday evening.
“We've had some minor impacts on our South Florida business, but things are back on track,” Southwest Airlines said in a statement.
The FAA said SpaceX will be grounding Starship until it completes its investigation into Thursday's incident.
It was the eighth test flight of the rocket. During previous test flights in January, the first part of the launch went smoothly, with all 33 engine boosters lifting the rockets towards space. The boosters were also properly separated, with the six engines of the second stage spacecraft igniting and pushing them up.
But something went wrong, and air traffic through the Caribbean was diverted around falling debris and had to be delayed.
In the first six tests, SpaceX demonstrated that the rocket's basic design works and that the spacecraft can return to Earth almost unharmed. Next year, SpaceX is trying to “certainly” improve “more or less” and prove its other capabilities. The company could potentially receive approval from the FAA on up to 25 flights this year.
The FAA is trying to avoid conflicts of interest with Musk and SpaceX.
The agency hired three SpaceX employees to work temporarily last month to help the agency upgrade its air traffic control systems and other technologies.
However, the ethics sent to three employees claims that it “does not receive access to the system” at the Commercial Space Transportation Bureau, part of the FAA that regulates SpaceX.
The previous spacecraft's final mise likely was caused by a stronger shaking than expected when the rocket vibrated like an organ pipe, SpaceX's investigation concluded. Vibration caused the ignition of propellant leak.
A few minutes later, the self-destructing system exploded the rocket, according to the company's analysis.
To address the issue during the seventh flight, the company said the feed line carrying propellant to the engine will change to reduce vibration. SpaceX also changed the engine's propellant temperature and thrust level to avoid repeated leaks.
For this flight rocket, SpaceX also added a system that purges the area of ​​propellant to reduce the chances of a fire.
The FAA oversaw the SpaceX investigation and issued a launch license for its eighth flight last week.
43-year-old Scott Ferguson, a neuroscientist and amateur astronomer who placed himself in a telescope in a parking lot near his home in Sarasota, Florida.
At about 6:40pm he saw a huge cloud suddenly appear through the telescope. Seconds later, he said he saw a large part of the ship's body “surrounded by metallic debris that appear to sparkle around it.”
Minutes later, Ferguson said he heard a loud noise that reminded him of the sound boom that he grew up in Titusville, Florida, near the Kennedy Space Center in Nasa. An additional boom continued after about 10 minutes.
The spacecraft is not the only rocket to be flew by SpaceX, which has a recent problem. There were also issues with some of the Falcon 9 rockets, which are released by Florida and California every few days.
On sale in February, the Falcon 9 upper stage failed to run a regular engine burn, as the rocket's body splashed into the sea. Instead, it remained in orbit. The air resistance gradually began to drop, and the stage reentered in Europe 18 days later. No one was injured or injured, but the rocket fragment appears to have landed in Poland.
SpaceX ran into another problem on Sunday night when the Falcon 9 booster landed nicely on an Atlantic barge, but then fell over.
The company reported that “an extranutrition fire at the rear end of the rocket caused one of the booster's landing legs to break, which turned it over.”
NASA plans to use a version of the spacecraft to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon during the Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for 2027.
But if the Trump administration revamps its lunar program or shifts attention to Mars, its mission could be delayed or cancelled.
SpaceX must demonstrate the high reliability of the spacecraft before it is aired.
Hank Sanders, Niraji Chokushi and Eric Lipton Reports of contributions.
