After a high-altitude test flight on Tuesday, the experimental SpaceX rocket exploded. However, the site could have been more precise, and there was uncertainty of what caused the explosion exactly.
Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, took to Twitter to confirm the explosion.
First, he Tweeted:
At least the crater is in the right place!
Second, he Tweeted:
Engine 2 had issues on ascent & didn’t reach operating chamber pressure during the landing burn, but, in theory, it wasn’t needed. Something significant happened shortly after the landing burn started. We should know what it was once we examine the bits later today.
The three previous launches that SpaceX made of these prototypes for this rocket model happened to crash when it landed or shortly after it landed.
John Insprucker, the SpaceX engineer who was the host of the webcast of the launch test, said that SN11, the rocket, had a normal take-off, and everything seemed acceptable before the cameras on board lost signal. The missile got covered by fog minutes before it landed.
Insprucker says that the company will share any updates on social media once the engineers at SpaceX check the landing site.
Before taking off, the vehicle’s surrounding area had to be cleared for safety reasons.
According to Insprucker, the company does not expect to get any video. He advised the viewers of the webcast to not wait for the landing.
Video Streamers
Individual video streamers who recorded the flight could not catch the flight’s last moments because of the fog. However, a media site, NASASpaceflight, reported that one of the outlet’s cameras might have been struck by wreckage from the rocket. The launchpad footage showed SN11 was nowhere to be seen after the rocket’s take-off.
The early repetition of the Starship is SN11. It is a vehicle that Musk envisions, and he says that one day, it will carry the first people to Mars.
Furthermore, it’s the fourth prototype launched by SpaceX for a high-altitude test flight because the company has to work on how a massive vehicle will be able to land straight when it returns to Earth.
The last prototype to fly was SN10. It landed in a straight position this month. However, the footage shows that after 3 minutes, the prototype exploded.
In September 2019, Musk explained the intended landing method for the Starship in a media event.
He advertised it as a unique procedure that would look at the rocket dive back through the air with its belly facing the Earth, and the four fins will slightly shift to keep it steady.
Musk that this procedure will mimic how a skydiver falls through the air instead of having an upright descent to Earth that Falcon 9 rockets from SpaceX use when landing.
According to the company’s website:
Making sure the belly-flop procedure is perfect is the most important thing to enable a fully reusable transportation system created to carry crew and cargo for a long time and help return to the moon and travel to Mars.
SpaceX plans to use the Starship for various reasons, like transporting customers between cities at a fast speed, helping NASA’s moon landing, and finally being able to launch cargo and human missions to Mars.
The Starship is in the beginning steps of its development.
The full-scale prototype has yet to be made.
In a recent interview with Joe Rogan, a podcast host, Musk said that they expect the Starship to have regular flights by 2023 and that a vehicle will reach orbit by the end of this year.
SpaceX may make it to the deadline.
What is the largest SpaceX rocket?
Hold onto your seats, rocket fans – we’ve got a new heavyweight champion in town! Elon Musk’s behemoth Starship rocket blasted the records for size and power, leaving all past rockets in the dust.
This beast is 394 feet tall and weighs 11 MILLION pounds when fuelled for liftoff. Just picture a towering 35-story skyscraper slowly tipping upright and roaring into space!
With its remarkable thrust capabilities, the Starship surpasses the power statistics of NASA’s most robust rockets, outperforming the Soviet Union’s formidable rockets from the past and even outshining SpaceX’s challenging spacecraft.
This muscle-bound machine is in a class of its own, making it the undisputed leviathan king of the rocket world. SpaceX engineers have defied physics to birth a vehicle of this magnitude. Watch out, universe – here comes the Starship!
