cnn
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SpaceX reported Thursday that its Starship spacecraft, which was supposed to circle Earth and land in the Indian Ocean, exploded shortly after its seventh test flight took off from south Texas.
The massive 71-meter Super Heavy rocket ignited its 33 engines and lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, shortly after 5 p.m. ET.
Minutes after launch, the Super Heavy shut down its engines and SpaceX was able to successfully guide the huge rocket back to the launch pad, achieving a precise landing next to the tower known as “Mechazilla.”
It is the second time the company has achieved this feat.
Perfecting this maneuver is crucial for SpaceX. The company aims to routinely land and relaunch Super Heavy rockets and, eventually, Starship spacecraft.
The goal of the Starship was to circle the planet and during that journey attempt to deploy 10 satellite “simulators,” which SpaceX said were “similar in size and weight” to the company’s next generation of Starlink Internet satellites.
The ship seemed to run smoothly for the first few minutes. About two and a half minutes into the flight, the spacecraft safely separated from the Super Heavy booster and fired its own six engines.
After flying on its own for about five minutes, one of the three internal engines, arranged in a circle within three other engines optimized for the vacuum of space, shut down.
Seconds later, more engines began to shut down, according to graphics shown on SpaceX’s live stream.
At 8 minutes and 30 seconds, five of the six engines were out of service and the tone of SpaceX’s live broadcast began to change, from enthusiastic cheers to concerned messages about the “state of the ship.”
About 10 minutes later, the webcast hosts, SpaceX’s Dan Huot and Kate Tice, confirmed that the Starship had been lost.
Elon Musk, director of SpaceX, shared a “preliminary” analysis of what could have caused the failure of the Starship spacecraft 10 minutes into the flight: a fuel leak was the probable cause.
Liquid oxygen is used as an oxidizer on Starship, allowing the engines to breathe fire while the fuel, liquid methane, burns. Both liquid oxygen and methane make up the fuels used by the engines of Starship’s Raptor rocket.
SpaceX has had a strong track record in recent test flights in guiding the Starship to a controlled landing at its target destination in the Indian Ocean.
Today’s failure was somewhat unexpected, but SpaceX said it was testing substantial improvements to this craft: It was larger in size because SpaceX installed larger fuel tanks, for example, and it had a new flight computer and improved avionics.
SpaceX said on social media platform
That’s SpaceX’s favorite euphemism for saying there was an unplanned explosion or destruction of a launch vehicle.
The specific details of why the Starship spacecraft exploded are unknown. The vehicle is equipped with a “flight termination system,” which is designed to blow the vehicle into pieces if it begins to veer off course.
The destruction of the vehicle is designed to ensure that large pieces of the rocket do not pose a threat to people or property.
SpaceX will likely have to wait a bit before its next test flight.
When rocket launches don’t go exactly as planned, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) typically launches an accident investigation. And federal regulators will likely want to understand exactly how, when and why Starship exploded during this mission and how debris from the event could have affected people or property.
CNN has reached out to the FAA for comment.
The Federal Aviation Administration later acknowledged in a statement that it “briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where debris from the space vehicle was falling.”
“Normal operations have resumed,” reads the statement, shared with CNN at 7:48 p.m. ET.
The FAA activates a “Debris Response Area” when rockets or spacecraft disintegrate or explode outside a predetermined safety zone.
The Starship disintegrated quite late in its flight path, about 10 minutes after takeoff.
It had already ascended 146 kilometers in altitude and was traveling at 21,317 kilometers per hour, according to the latest telemetry data shared by SpaceX.
Social networks shared photos and videos that, according to users, capture the moment Starship exploded over the Caribbean.
Elon Musk shared one of the images in a post and seemed to downplay the situation, saying that “entertainment is guaranteed!”
