SpaceX Starship breaks apart after launch in second failure in a row | Global News Avenue

SpaceX launched a giant Starship rocket on Thursday during the eighth test flight of the program, but some form of failure triggered multiple engine shutdowns in the previous phase and the vehicle failed to reach its planned suborbital altitude and ruptured in a spectacular debris shower.

Yes The second consecutive failure For the arrival of the Starship, it is a crucial vehicle for NASA to plan to return astronauts to the moon in the coming years.

“Obviously, there are a lot of things to dig. We’ll keep going,” SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot said. “The main reason we do these flight tests is to learn. We have more knowledge about this car, but we’re going to come back here in the not too far future and we’re going to take a ship to space.”

Commentator Kate Tice added: “We flew to learn, we’re learning a lot. Like development plans like the Starship Project, progress is not always linear.”

Federal Aviation Administration says it has ordered Accident Investigation Enter the Lost Starship.

Flights at several Florida airports have been temporarily rooted due to the risk of debris decline. The ground stops have now been cancelled, but the FAA reported that both Miami International Airport and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport had about 45 minutes of departure delays, which was listed as “space launch debris.” Flights at Palm Beach International Airport and Orlando International Airport were also affected.

“During the event, the FAA activates the debris response zone and briefly slows down the aircraft outside the area where debris of space vehicles fall or stops at their departure locations. Normal operations have resumed.”

SpaceX said in a statement that after the spacecraft experienced what was called “rapid unplanned disassembly”, the company immediately began to coordinate with security officials to implement a pre-planned emergency response. ”

Start publishing according to plan

Due to unspecified technical issues, SpaceX launched the overweight first-stage 33 methane fuel engine at 6:30 pm EST three days after the last minute scrub. Two seconds later, the world’s tallest and most powerful rocket rose from the company’s launch site on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Able to generate up to 16 million pounds of thrust, more than twice the size of NASA’s Saturn 5 Moon Rocket – the super heavy ship on the easternmost part of the blue-blue flame Long Jet.

After lifting the Starship up from the thick lower atmosphere, the 230-foot-tall superweight first-stage booster flew back to the launch site and mastered two huge robotic arms, called “Chopsticks”, mounted on the side of the launch tower.

The chopsticks close around the slowly descending booster, locking onto the structural capture device on both sides of the rocket. SpaceX’s third dramatic launch pad Capture is a key element of the company’s plan to quickly renovate and reuse plans.

Meanwhile, according to the planned power plan of the six Raptor engines, the 160-foot-tall starship climbed into space as it seemed flawless as it soared toward the planned orbit, thus space rising.

Trouble 8 minutes after lifting

But more than eight minutes after launch, telemetry displayed in SpaceX’s live network broadcasts showed that four of the six engines were shut down prematurely. The camera on the spacecraft showed the spacecraft began to rotate approximately, and contact was lost after a few seconds.

Multiple videos posted on YouTube show that after the vehicle breaks, debris is rapidly towards the earth. It is not clear whether the breakup was triggered by Starship’s self-destruction system or by extreme structural loads, as it fell into the lower atmosphere.

While SpaceX will undoubtedly try its usual quick recovery, the FAA will almost certainly order another failed investigation. Given the two destructive breakups, it may take longer to return to flight status this time.

The flight plan requires a series of tests, including the deployment of four simulated Starlink satellites to test Starship’s payload release system, a space restart of one of Rocket’s Raptor engines, and ultimately the need for new insulation panel materials and components that ultimately require capture back to the Starship.

At the end of the suborbital flight, the interstellar spacecraft is expected to pour into the atmosphere first. Once passed through the area of ​​maximum atmospheric heating, the rocket was programmed vertically and then settled in the Indian Ocean near Australia for a rocket-powered “soft landing”.

But that’s not.

January launch ends with self-destruction

During the program’s seventh integrated flight test or IFT in January, a fire broke out above the first phase of the engine that was overweight after launch, with contacts losing eight minutes and 20 seconds after launch.

Three minutes after that, the Rocket’s self-destruction system triggered an explosion that separates the starships and creates spectacular fragments of flames that rain along the flight path.

Telemetry showed that the fire broke out after one of the raptor lines broke due to unexpected harmonic vibrations. SpaceX conducted a 60-second engine test of the Starship launched on Monday, studying its response to various thrust levels.

Based on the test results, the propellant feed line was modified, the fuel temperature was changed and the thrust level was adjusted to avoid any such harmonic response. Additional ventilation holes were installed in areas where the fire broke out and a nitrogen cleaning system was added to minimize the chances of fire.

I don’t know what went wrong on Thursday.

Plans for interstellar spacecraft aimed at the moon

Working from super heavy promotion is crucial to SpaceX and NASA. SpaceX signed a contract with NASA to provide improved starships in the agency’s Artemis program to bring astronauts to landings near the South Pole of the Moon.

To get the starship to the moon, SpaceX must first put it in low-Earth orbit and then launch multiple super heavy racing “tankers” to refuel the moon’s starships in order to head to Lunar Orbit.

Astronauts will launch rockets on NASA’s space launch system and fly to the moon on the Orion capsule built by Lockheed Martin. The crew will be transferred to the waiting starship to descend to the moon’s surface. NASA hopes to send the first woman and the next man to the moon in a timeframe of 2027-28, which has not been placed after the moon landing of the interstellar spacecraft.

Given the amount of super heavy currency required for a single moon landing, rapid reusability is a key element of the program. Multiple successful test flights are required to perfect the system and demonstrate the reliability required to carry astronauts.

The latest accident is in the ambitious SpaceX program, which has undergone a major upgrade at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, building a 380-foot-tall building that can be renovated and renovated from a Florida launch pad for launch.

The towering “Jijib” facility will provide 46.5 million cubic space to handle 815,000 square feet of work space. Construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2026. Another facility planned to build Starship from scratch in Florida, similar to that of Boca Chica.

“To get us to take the initial Starship flight from Florida, while our Space Coast Starship manufacturing, integration and renovation facilities are being completed, we will first transport the superheavy booster and the superheavy booster, establishing a Starship fleet in Florida from the barge through the barge,” Spacex said in a statement Monday.

“With the production, integration, renovation and launch facilities in Florida and Texas, we will quickly increase the launch speed of the Starship through its fast and reusable capabilities.”

Contributed to this report.