SpaceX's deep-space rocket system, Starship, safely lifted off in the morning hours of Nov. 18 but ended prematurely with an explosion and a loss of signal.
The Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft successfully separated after liftoff, as the Starship lit up its engines and pushed away.
That process ended up destroying the Super Heavy booster, which erupted into a ball of flames over the Gulf of Mexico. But the Starship spacecraft was able to briefly continue its journey.
The Starship system made it much further into flight than the first attempt in April. The rocket and spacecraft lifted off the launchpad at 7 a.m. CT, with the Super Heavy booster igniting all 33 of its engines.
About 2.5 minutes after roaring to life and vaulting off the launchpad, the Super Heavy booster expended most of its fuel, and the Starship spacecraft fired its own engines and broke away.
The Starship spacecraft used its own six engines to continue propelling itself to faster speeds. SpaceX aimed to send the spacecraft to near orbital velocities, typically around 17,500 miles per hour.
"The automated flight termination system on second stage appears to have triggered very late in the burn as we were headed down range out over the Gulf of Mexico," aerospace engineer John Insprucker said.
The flight termination system is essentially a self-destruct feature that SpaceX engaged to prevent the Starship from traveling off course.
NASA is investing up to $4B in the rocket system with the goal of using the Starship capsule to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface for its Artemis III mission, currently slated to take off as soon as 2025. (CNN 11/18/23) SpaceX loses rocket and spacecraft over Gulf of Mexico in second test flight (wapt.com)
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