The world’s largest rocket, Starship, developed by SpaceX for trips to the Moon and Mars, exploded shortly after takeoff, but this first test flight was celebrated by the company’s owner, Elon Musk, who foresees a new launch ” in a few months”.
Source: AFP
He black and silver mega rocket took off successfully at 8:33 a.m. local time (1333 GMT) from Starbase, SpaceX’s space base in Boca Chica, Texas, to cheers from employees. But soon after it exploded.
“Congratulations to the SpaceX team on an exciting Starship test launch! We have learned a lot for the next test launch in a few months,” Musk tweeted.
The cause of the explosion is not yet known. He purpose of this test flight was to collect as much data as possible to improve the following prototypes.
A first pitch attempt in the final minutes of the countdown was canceled on Monday due to a technical problem.
“This is the first flight of a huge and very complex rocket,” Musk had said on Sunday, calling the test “very risky.”
The US space agency, NASA, chose the Starship spacecraft to transport astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. The mission, known as Artemis III, is scheduled for the end of 2025.
NASA chief Bill Nelson praised SpaceX. “Every great achievement in history has required some level of calculated risk,” he tweeted, saying he was “looking forward” to the next test.
With 120 meters, Starship was taller than NASA’s new megarocketSLS (98 m), which launched for the first time in November, and the legendary Saturn V, the rocket of the Apollo lunar program (111 m).
Starship consisted of a powerful first stage, called Super Heavy and equipped with 33 engines, and a second stage, the Starship spacecraft, which by extension gave the entire rocket its name.
SpaceX had successfully conducted a test fire of all 33 engines in February, but Super Heavy and Starship had never flown together. The test flight was intended to assess its performance in full configuration.
– Fear of an explosion –
On Thursday, the flight plan was as follows: About three minutes after liftoff, the Super Heavy booster would separate from Starship and plunge into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But this separation did not occur and the rocket exploded.
If the separation had been successful, the Starship, which had six of its own engines, should have continued its climb to an altitude of more than 150 kilometers, before falling into the Pacific after completing almost one full circle of Earth.
But getting through all these steps on the first test flight would have been quite a feat.
Musk had tempered expectations, saying it was unlikely to reach orbit on the first try. He indicated that he would at least hope the launch pad was not destroyed by the explosion of the Super Heavy’s engines upon igniting, as rebuilding it could take “months.”
Starship must be able to transport and launch up to 150 tons of cargo into orbit. By comparison, the Falcon 9 rocket, also from SpaceX, can only carry just over 22 tons to low-Earth orbit.
But the real innovation of Starship is that it must be fully reusable, something Musk believes can be achieved in “two to three years.”
In this first test, there was not going to be an attempt to recover either of the two stages of the rocket, but eventually, yes.
“We’ve designed Starship to be as close to airline operations as possible,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, explained in February.
The idea of a reusable launcher, Musk’s big strategy, is to lower prices. Each Starship flight could ultimately cost only “a few million” dollars, he noted.
This is an imperative for the billionaire, who he believes that humans will need hundreds of Starship rockets to have a chance of becoming a multi-planetary species.
