The world’s most powerful rocket has had yet another setback after tumbling out of control and breaking apart last night.
After back-to-back explosions in the last launches, SpaceX launched Starship again hoping to release a series of mock satellites.
But although this time it did reach space – unlike the last attempts – it began spinning soon afterwards and went out of control towards a crash landing in the sea.
Its payload could also not be released because the door failed to open all the way.
SpaceX boss Elon Musk said it was still a ‘big improvement’ on the last launches, which ended with flaming debris dramatically raining down from the sky over the Atlantic.
The 403ft rocket blasted off on its ninth demo from Starbase, its launch site in Texas which residents voted this month to make an official city.
SpaceX later confirmed that the spacecraft experienced ‘a rapid unscheduled disassembly’, AKA it burst apart.
‘Teams will continue to review data and work toward our next flight test,’ the company said in an online statement.
Despite the setback, Mr Musk promised a faster pace in future with a Starship lifting off every three to four weeks for the next three flights.
The powerful rockets are a key part of Nasa’s plans to return humans to the Moon this decade, as well as potentially get to Mars after that.
Four astronauts are expected to fly around the moon without landing next year.
Then, humans will walk on the lunar landscape again as early as 2027… if Starship stops exploding every time, given that the two astronauts selected will need it to get there and back again.
Trouble at Tesla
We wouldn’t want to take on Elon Musk’s ‘to do’ list right now, honestly.
As well as troubleshooting a rocket that seems keen to self destruct, he’s also managing tumbling sales at his electric car company, Tesla.
In March, it was estimated that business was so bad that the world’s richest man was losing a £1 million a minute (sounds dire, but do take into account the fact he had some £300,000,000,000 to begin with).
It is thought to be one of the reasons he stepped back from his US government role at DOGE, which stands for the Department of Government Effiency but is also one of his favourite memes.
As well, he will need to devote some time to working out how to stop his social media platform X going down again, after global outages last week on two separate days.
Mr Musk posted that he now ‘back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms. I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out.’
Yesterday’s launch was the first time one of the Starships flew with a recycled booster.
There were no plans to catch the booster with giant chopsticks back at the launch pad this time, with the company instead pushing it to its limits.
Its Super Heavy booster successfully separated, but then exploded shortly before splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
The upper part of the spacecraft continued towards the Indian Ocean, and then it also went out of control, apparently due to fuel leaks.
‘Not looking great with a lot of our on-orbit objectives for today,’ said SpaceX flight commentator Dan Huot.
The company had been looking to test the spacecraft’s heat shield during a controlled re-entry.
Communication ceased before the spacecraft came down, and SpaceX ended its webcast soon afterwards.
In the last two demos this year, the rockets never made it past the Caribbean and the tests ended just minutes after liftoff, raining wreckage into the ocean and disrupting airline travel, although no injuries or serious damage were reported.
The Federal Aviation Administration last week cleared Starship for another flight, expanding the hazard area and pushing the liftoff outside peak air travel times.
This one was meant to sink in the Indian Ocean, but the company wanted to test the add-ons for capturing future versions back at the pad, just like the boosters.
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