Elon Musk's SpaceX company suspects a fire may have been the cause of his 400-foot Starship exploding in space after launching from Texas, showering a trail of burning debris near the Caribbean Sea. I doubt it.
The billionaire said a preliminary assessment of Thursday's failed test flight showed that an internal leak of liquid oxygen fuel may have increased pressure inside the giant rocket's cavity during liftoff, causing the fire. said.
The resulting fire would tear the doomed spacecraft apart upon liftoff.
The company vowed Friday to conduct a “thorough investigation” into the accident in conjunction with the Federal Aviation Administration.
Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket, lifted off from the southern tip of Texas on a test flight Thursday night.
Booster returned to his pad and was caught by a giant mechanical arm called “Chopstick”. This maneuver was only the second successful capture in Starship history.
But before all communications were lost about eight and a half minutes into the flight, the spacecraft's engines began to fail while it was still ascending.
Dramatic footage taken near the Turks and Caicos Islands showed debris from the spacecraft raining down from the sky in the aftermath.
The ordeal forced planes in the area to be diverted.
Before detonating, Starship was scheduled to cross the Gulf of Mexico and release 10 dummy satellites as a practice exercise before detonating itself in the Indian Ocean.
Musk told X that the accident was “just a coincidence” in his plans to build a spacecraft to take people to Mars.
After sufficient testing, the plan is to send an actual Starlink satellite aboard an aircraft, then to other satellites, and eventually to people.
with post wire
