SpaceX Starship: a spaceship that could one day carry people to Mars, has completed its first integrated launch, but it did so only minutes after its highly anticipated debut long-haul flight.
Just four minutes after liftoff from the company’s Boca Chica launch site in South Texas, when the Starship stage was supposed to separate from the Super Heavy rocket, both the stage and the rocket experienced an “unscheduled rapid disassembly.” “, a euphemism that Elon Musk and his colleagues at SpaceX sometimes use for a rocket explosion.
This test flight was intended to go almost orbital. The ship was supposed to fly at an altitude of 146 miles and make most of one orbit around the Earth. The Super Heavy rocket was planned to land off the Texas coast shortly after launch, and the Starship vehicle would have landed at the end of its journey 90 minutes later, off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii.
But SpaceX hails the flight as a success and a chance to improve Starship for future testing. “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX looks to make life multiplanetary.” SpaceX tweeted shortly after the explosion.
And the crowd at SpaceX’s Texas starbase, who cheered enthusiastically during the countdown, didn’t seem to mind the deviation from plan, continuing to cheer and applaud even as the malfunction became apparent and the Starship stack began to spin. instead of separating, and then burst into columns of white smoke. “Everything after clearing the tower was the icing on the cake,” said SpaceX commentator Kate Tice. “As promised, an exciting end to Starship’s maiden integrated test flight.”
The stakes have been high on this 390-foot rocket. SpaceX officials, especially CEO and co-founder Elon Musk, have made frequent bold claims of wanting to use Starship to do humanity multiplanetary. NASA is also keeping a close eye on this test flight, which has been delayed multiple times since 2021, as it could determine whether SpaceX can honor its contracts to provide the space agency Starship moon-landers by 2025 for the third and fourth artemis quests. The US Federal Aviation Administration is also watching to ensure public safety in the region of the launch site, following a long review of the potential dangers of SpaceX’s Starship program.
SpaceX revealed few details of the launch before this week and the company did not respond to WIRED’s media requests. But there were some clues that it was imminent: The FAA included the launch in its advice on operations planwith backup dates through April 22. And officials in Cameron County, Texas, announced last week that Boca Chica Beach and the local highway, State Highway 4, would be closed on April 17, with the next two days as possible backups.
However, until the afternoon of April 14, when the FAA awarded SpaceX its critique release license, it was not even clear that the huge spacecraft would get the green light. From the fall 2021the FAA, which sets the rules for launch and reentry, has been conducting a comprehensive environmental review of SpaceX launch and test operations in Texas. Last June, the agency asked the company to address some 75 issues to minimize air and water pollution, harm to local communities, and threats to plants and animals at the neighboring wildlife refuge and in the coast.