The spacecraft on Starship’s upper stage was supposed to make a partial orbit around Earth before crashing into the Pacific Ocean, close to Hawaii (Image Credit: SpaceX/Twitter)
SpaceX’s starship, touted as the world’s most powerful spacecraft – capable of taking astronauts to the Moon, Mars and beyond – successfully launched on its second launch attempt, but later exploded before reaching orbit .
SpaceX’s starship, touted as the world’s most powerful spacecraft – capable of taking astronauts to the Moon, Mars and beyond – successfully launched on its second launch attempt, but later exploded before reaching orbit .
Earlier, on Monday this week, Starship’s first launch was canceled at the last minute due to a pressurization system failure that occurred with the Super Heavy booster, the first stage or booster of the Starship launch system – with 33 Raptor engines on board . Today, however, Starship successfully lifted off from the Starbase in Texas at approximately 8:28 a.m. CT (6:58 p.m. IST) after the Super Heavy booster successfully ignited its Raptor engines and lifted off.
“Congratulations @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for the next test launch in a few months,” Elon Musk tweeted.
“Spaceship Launch!” said SpaceX. It added: “Starship has cleared the path and the beach! Vehicle is on a nominal flight path.”
The company notes that Starship experienced “rapid unplanned disassembly before phase separation” and that teams involved will continue to review the data collected to work on future flights.
“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX tries to make life multi-planetary,” the company said.
The spacecraft on Starship’s upper stage was supposed to make a partial orbit around Earth before crashing into the Pacific Ocean, close to Hawaii.
The Starship spacecraft, featuring a Super Heavy booster with 33 Raptor engines, is SpaceX’s largest rocket to date, larger than NASA’s Space Launch System. The two-part system has a height of 120 meters, a diameter of 9 meters and a load capacity of 100-150 tons. The reusable methane-oxygen engines have twice the thrust of Falcon 9 Merlin engines and can accommodate more than 100 people for long interplanetary flights. Starship will support NASA’s Artemis mission and help establish bases on the Moon and Mars, in conjunction with the SLS.
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