“Rockets are hard,” said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in an early Friday morning X post after the company’s latest rocket launch ended in an explosion and concerns about debris.
According to a statement from SpaceX, its eighth Starship test flight lifted off from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, at 5:30 p.m. CT Thursday. Things went well at first – the Super Heavy booster successfully lit the Starship’s 33 Raptor engines and propelled it through a nominal first-stage ascent. Then, approximately two and a half minutes into flight, the Super Heavy booster shutdown all but three of its Raptor engines for a planned “hot-staging separation.”
At that point, Starship successfully lit its six Raptor engines and separated from the Super Heavy booster, while the Super Heavy relit 11 of 13 planned Raptor engines and “performed a boostback burn to return itself to the launch site,” that ultimately resulted in the third successful catch of a Super Heavy booster.
While Starship continued its ascent to its planned trajectory, what SpaceX described as an “energetic event in the aft portion of Starship,” caused the loss of several Raptor engines. That, in turn, led to a loss of attitude control and a loss of communications.
“Final contact with Starship came approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds after liftoff,” said SpaceX. In posts on the Musk-owned social media platform X, the company said that the vehicle “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” that any debris would have fallen in a pre-planned debris response area, that no toxic materials were present in the debris and that the debris was not expected to significantly impact nearby marine life or water quality.
It also said that SpaceX teams “immediately began coordination with the FAA, ATO (air traffic control) and other safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses,” after the incident occurred.
Although SpaceX said debris was expected to fall in a pre-planned area, the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily halted air traffic at multiple Florida airports due to concerns about the debris, CBS News reported.
“Some flights at MIA are being delayed due to falling debris from the SpaceX launch over the Atlantic Ocean,” said Greg Chin, Communications Director at Miami International Airport, as quoted by the outlet.
According to POLITICO, this mishap “marks the second time a Starship vehicle has broken up after ascending to space, disintegrating into a shower of sparks caught in multiple videos on social media,” with the first occurring in January. After that mishap, the FAA required SpaceX to investigate, and the administration Thursday said it’s requiring a new mishap investigation of the latest flight, POLITICO added.
“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability,” said SpaceX. “We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests.”
Audacy reported in August that the FAA grounded SpaceX rockets after a booster failure. The following month, we reported that the FAA proposed that SpaceX pay $630,000 in civil penalties for failing to follow its license agreements during to launches in 2023, according to a Tuesday announcement from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Last weekend, Audacy also reported on Musk’s comments to podcaster Joe Rogan that a SpaceX flight would bring NASA astronauts stranded in space back home in around a month. Following his post about rockets being hard, Musk posted again about the development of SpaceX making “fully rapidly reusable rockets,” saying: “One of the hardest technology problems ever, but it must be done.”