STARBASE, TEXAS: SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, exploded on Thursday during the first test flight of the spacecraft designed to send astronauts to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
The gigantic rocket successfully blasted off at 8:33 am Central Time from Starbase, the private SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas.
The Starship capsule had been scheduled to separate from the first-stage rocket booster three minutes into the uncrewed flight but separation failed to occur and the rocket blew up.
“As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation,” SpaceX said.
Despite the failure to complete the full flight test, SpaceX declared it a success.
“We cleared the tower which was our only hope,” said Kate Tice, a SpaceX quality systems engineer.
“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary,” SpaceX added. The US space agency Nasa has picked the Starship spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the Moon in late 2025 for the first time since the Apollo programme ended in 1972.
Starship consists of a 50-metre tall spacecraft designed to carry crew and cargo that sits atop first-stage Super Heavy booster rocket.
The integrated test flight was intended to assess their performance in combination.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk had warned ahead of the launch that technical issues were likely and sought to play down expectations for the inaugural test flight.
“It’s a very risky flight,” he said. “It’s the first launch of a very complicated, gigantic rocket.
“There’s a million ways this rocket could fail,” Musk said.
SpaceX foresees eventually putting a Starship into orbit, and then refueling it with another Starship so it can continue on a journey to Mars or beyond.
— AFP
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