SpaceX staged an unintentional fireworks show above the Caribbean on Thursday when the eighth flight of its giant Starship rocket ended with the upper stage tumbling out of control, exploding, and leaving glowing trails of wreckage streaming through the upper atmosphere.
This was the second Starship launch to end this way, following a similar failure on the seventh test flight in January. However, as with that and the fifth mission in October, Starship’s first stage performed as designed and returned to its launch pad for a catch by the “chopsticks” arms of that tower—something no other launch vehicle does.
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The 403-foot-tall Starship lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility at Boca Chica, Texas, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern on Thursday. The Super Heavy booster’s 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines took the vehicle through staging, after which that first stage completed a boostback trajectory that ended with the booster easing itself into the embrace of the launch tower seven minutes after liftoff.
The upper stage and its six Raptor engines seemed to be performing equally well until four of them cut out 8 minutes into the flight. The rocket then began spinning out of control. “It looks like we are losing attitude control of the ship,” SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot said on the company’s live stream.
Video relayed by SpaceX’s Starlink broadband-satellite constellation began cutting out, a fifth engine shut down, and the last Raptor stopped about 9.5 minutes into flight, followed seconds later by telemetry freezing with the upper stage at 89 miles up and moving at 12,677mph. “We were only about 20 seconds or so away from the end of that ship ascent burn,” Huot observed.
Four of six engines shutting down was not a positive development for the flight. (Rob Pegoraro)
Soon after, pictures and video began popping up on social media of the remains of Starship’s upper stage burning up on reentry above the Caribbean Sea. That unplanned end to the mission led to what Reuters described as “numerous” flight diversions as well as brief, FAA-ordered ground stops at four Florida airports.
SpaceX later posted this explanation of the failure, the second in a row of the Block 2 version of the upper stage, in its recap of the flight: “Prior to the end of the ascent burn, an energetic event in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines. This in turn led to a loss of attitude control and ultimately a loss of communications with Starship.”
The statement closed with a pledge to find and fix what went wrong: “We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests.”
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The failure means SpaceX will have to wait for the next Starship launch to complete such planned tests as a deployment of dummy Starlink satellites. Later test objectives include returning the upper stage for a powered landing, then orbital missions to demonstrate the ability of one upper stage to refuel another for missions to the Moon and beyond.
SpaceX is counting on Starship’s enormous capacity to deliver 60 v3 Starlink satellites at a time, and CEO Elon Musk has said repeatedly that the vehicle is essential to his vision of colonizing Mars.
NASA is counting on the rocket too, having signed a $2.89 billion contract with SpaceX in 2021 to develop a version of Starship’s upper stage as a crewed lunar lander for its Artemis return to the Moon. The space agency then awarded a $3.4 billion contract to Blue Origin in 2023 to develop a second lunar lander to fly on that firm’s New Glenn rocket. That backup plan may now look a little smarter.
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About Rob Pegoraro
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