SpaceX founder Elon Musk said that the company ‘learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.’
SpaceX on Thursday successfully launched its massive Starship rocket, only to see it drastically fail and come apart in the sky minutes later.
The most powerful rocket ever built launched from Texas, and its spacecraft was expected to separate from the rocket and enter Earth’s orbit to perform one lap around the planet before its planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii roughly an hour and a half after the launch.
But after the launch, the two structures did not separate and could instead be seen rotating together through the sky before experiencing a “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” as SpaceX put it.
“Obviously this does not appear to be a nominal situation,” a SpaceX commentator said during the company’s live coverage.
Photos: Space Over Time
Photos: Space Over Time
The company said that “teams will continue to review data and work toward our next flight test.”
It was the second attempt at the test. The first attempt on Monday ran into issues with a frozen pressurant valve. The launch had to be delayed at least 48 hours to prepare for another try.
SpaceX Founder Elon Musk tweeted that they “learned a lot” from the first attempt. He said that the company was working “around the clock on many issues.”
Musk continued to try to set expectations low for the second launch attempt, saying that maybe the Thursday test would happen but “maybe not.”
“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 tweeted after Thursday’s launch.
SpaceX describes Starship as a “fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.” Starship will transport astronauts to the surface of the moon for NASA’s Artemis program.
Source: usnews.com
