Washington, USA:
SpaceX's Starship prototype fails minutes after launching from Texas on Thursday, forcing a flight over the Gulf of Mexico to change course to avoid falling debris and Elon Musk's workhorse rocket The plan was set back.
SpaceX mission control announced the launch of the newly upgraded mock satellite carrying its first test payload, eight minutes after liftoff from a rocket facility in South Texas at 5:38 p.m. ET (22:38 GMT). Lost contact with starship.
Video taken by Reuters showed an orange ball of light streaking across the sky over Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake.
“All communication with the ship was lost, which essentially means there was something wrong with the upper stage,” SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said, adding that the ship disappeared minutes later. I admitted that I was hurt.
Although the Starship's upper stage last failed last March while re-entering Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, SpaceX accidents have rarely caused widespread disruption to air traffic.
Some flights were grounded at Miami International Airport, a Reuters witness said. At least 20 commercial flights were diverted to other airports or changed course to avoid possible debris, based on flight records from tracking website FlightRadar24. The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates commercial launch activities, said it was assessing the situation.
SpaceX CEO Musk posted a video of the debris scene to X, saying, “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”
The Starship's upper stage is 2 meters (6.56 feet) taller than previous versions, making it a “new generation ship with significant upgrades,” SpaceX said in a mission briefing before the test. It was scheduled to make a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean about an hour after liftoff from Texas.
Mechazilla caught Super Heavy Booster! pic.twitter.com/aq91TloYzY
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 16, 2025
The mission is SpaceX's seventh since 2023 in Musk's multibillion-dollar effort to build rockets capable of transporting humans and cargo to Mars and deploying large numbers of satellites into Earth's orbit. It will be a starship test.
SpaceX's test-to-fail development approach has seen spectacular failures in the past as the company pushed Starship prototypes to their engineering limits. But Thursday's test failure occurred during a mission phase previously flown by SpaceX.
Meanwhile, the towering super-heavy booster returned to the launch pad about seven minutes after liftoff, as planned, and slowed its descent from space by re-igniting its Raptor engines while hooking itself to a giant mechanical arm fixed to the launch tower. Ta.
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