SpaceX’s Starship rocket unexpectedly explodes just minutes into its seventh test flight, a surprising fate for Elon Musk’s company, which has consistently improved its rocket’s capabilities. It was a reversal.
The incident forced airlines to reroute their flights over the Gulf of Mexico to avoid encounters with plummeting debris, the Hindustan Times reported. Moreover, it was a significant stumbling block to Elon Musk’s best rocket idea.
Eight minutes after liftoff from a rocket facility in South Texas at 5:38 p.m. ET (22:38 GMT), SpaceX’s control systems lost contact with the recently hardened Starship. The Starship was unmanned and was carrying out its first test flight with a mock satellite as its payload.
Preliminary findings suggest an oxygen leak as the cause of the Starship rocket collapse, but SpaceX plans to conduct a thorough investigation to confirm the exact cause of the accident. The company’s CEO Elon Musk disseminated the latest information through a post on his social media platform X.
“Preliminary indications are that there was an oxygen and fuel leak in the cavity above the firewall of the marine engine. It was large enough to build pressure beyond vent capacity,” he posted I’m writing this.
Despite this being an obvious hurdle for the company’s space project, Musk remains optimistic about the impending launch. Additionally, it also provided information about what SpaceX plans to implement to prevent such failures in the future.
“Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we plan to add fire extinguishing equipment to that volume and possibly increase the vent area. There is nothing,” he added.
The previous instance of Starship’s upper stage failure occurred during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean in March of the previous year.
This was SpaceX’s seventh Starship test since 2023 as part of Musk’s multibillion-dollar project. The goal is to build a rocket that can transport both humans and cargo to Mars, as well as deploy a significant group of satellites into Earth’s orbit.
SpaceX’s test-to-fail method has historically resulted in dramatic failures as the company stretches the engineering limits of its Starship prototypes. But Thursday’s test failure occurred during a mission phase that SpaceX has had successes with in the past.
Meanwhile, the formidable Falcon Super Heavy booster returned to the launch pad as scheduled, about seven minutes after liftoff. It slowed its return from space by restarting the Raptor engine and anchoring itself to a giant mechanical arm attached to the launch tower.
