SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, took off from a launch pad on the coast of South Texas on Thursday at 9:28 a.m. ET, but exploded midair before stage separation. Thursday’s launch marked the vehicle’s historic first test flight.
The massive Super Heavy rocket booster lifted off and sent a massive boom across the coastal landscape as it soared out over the Gulf of Mexico. About two and a half minutes after takeoff, the Super Heavy rocket booster was scheduled to expend most of its fuel and separate from the Starship spacecraft, leaving the booster to be discarded in the ocean. The Starship was meant to use its own engines, blazing for more than six minutes, to propel itself to nearly orbital speeds. According to SpaceX, the flight reached its highest point 24.2 miles (39 kilometers) above the ground and the explosion occurred about four minutes after liftoff.
Clearing the launch pad was a major milestone for Starship, and although it ended in an explosion, Thursday’s test met several of the company’s objectives for the vehicle. SpaceX tweeted, “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary. As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation”
In a post-launch tweet, Elon Musk congratulated the team on “an exciting test launch” and said they “learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.” In addition, NASA administrator Bill Nelson took to Twitter to share his congratulations on the flight test: “Congrats to @SpaceX on Starship’s first integrated flight test! Every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward. Looking forward to all that SpaceX learns, to the next flight test—and beyond.”
SpaceX will need a new launch license from the FAA to make another attempt, but the company does not expect the process to be as laborious as securing the license for Thursday’s launch.
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