SpaceX announced that they intentionally triggered the explosion that ended the test launch of their Starship rocket, and despite the explosion, they consider the launch to have been a massive success.
The Super Heavy rocket and Starship, measuring 395 feet, took off for their inaugural orbital launch at 9:33 AM ET but exploded into flames four minutes later.
The Super Heavy launch vehicle failed to split when Elon Musk’s team initiated the flight termination device, throwing it into an uncontrolled death spiral.
Thousands of spectators gathered around the South Texas site to witness Starship launch its 33 powerful Raptor engines and blast out into space before a swift unplanned dismantle.
According to SpaceX Principal Integration Engineer John Insprucker, “Now this was a development test.
This is Starship’s maiden test flight. And the idea is to collect the data, clear the pad, and get ready to go again. As a result, you never know what will happen. But, as previously said, excitement is assured. And Starship provided a fairly stunning conclusion to what had been a truly remarkable test thus far.”
Musk had warned the world ahead of Thursday’s voyage that there was a 50% possibility the spacecraft might explode during the test flight. However, any setbacks will be extremely costly as the entire program will cost between $3 billion and $10 billion, as stated by Musk.
What went wrong?
Two minutes after launch, Engineer John Insprucker reported that the rocket was ready for stage separation at three minutes.
The main engine shut down at two minutes and 51 seconds as intended, but the upper stage cone swung back towards Earth, causing the rocket to spiral at three minutes and 31 seconds.
Despite the rocket spinning in circles, SpaceX’s engineers had not given up on the mission and stated that they were still waiting for stage separation. “It appears that we observed the beginnings of the flip, but obviously we’re watching the full Starship stack rotating from the ground cameras,” added Insprucker.