Air traffic has been destroyed in Florida as Elon Musk took people to Mars one day, and SpaceX Starship, a prototype of a spaceship that he said collapsed during his latest test flight.
For the second in a row, the most powerful rocket ever built has been malfunctioned. Some engines disappeared and after losing contact with mission control, they began spinning out of control.
Photos and videos posted on social media site X are posted by users who say they were along the coast of Florida, showing signs of a spaceship being broken in the sky.
Departures from two major Florida airports (Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport and Miami International Airport) were delayed by up to 45 minutes due to “space-fire debris,” according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
According to the FAA, departure from Philadelphia International Airport was similarly delayed by 30 minutes for space-fired debris.
In a post on website X, SpaceX explained what happened in a statement.
“During the Starship's rising burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid, unplanned demolition and contact was lost,” the company said. “Our team immediately began coordination with safety personnel and implemented pre-planned emergency response.”
The rocket was lifted on its eighth test flight after 6:30pm east time from the SpaceX launch site known as Starbase, in the southern tip of Texas, near the city of Brownsville.
The launch was scheduled for Monday evening, but if the sensor readings were incorrect, the countdown stopped in about 30 seconds. A few minutes later, the launch attempt was halted.
After several days of repairs, the company said Starship is ready to retry most of its seventh flight, which was launched in January.
The spacecraft rocket system is the largest ever built. It is 403 feet tall and is nearly 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty on the pedestal.
It has the most engines ever in the Rocket Booster. The super heavy booster is powered by SpaceX's 33 Raptor engine. When these engines lift the spacecraft out of the launchpad, they generate 16 million pounds of thrust at full throttle.
The top, also known as a spaceship or ship for short, looks like a shiny rocket from a 1950s science fiction film, but is made from stainless steel with large fins. This is the upper stage heading into orbit, and ultimately can transport people to the moon and even Mars.
In six tests before the seventh flight, SpaceX demonstrated that the rocket's basic design works and that the spacecraft can return to Earth almost unharmed. Next year, SpaceX is trying to “certainly” improve “more or less” and prove its other capabilities. The company could potentially receive up to 25 flights this year from the Federal Aviation Administration.
During the rocket's seventh test flight, the first part of the launch went smoothly, with all 33 engine boosters lifting the rocket towards space. The boosters were also properly separated, with the six engines of the second stage spacecraft igniting and pushing them up. But something went wrong, and air traffic through the Caribbean was diverted around falling debris and had to be delayed.
About two minutes after the top flight, a flash occurred near the back of a spacecraft near one of the engines, SpaceX said. The company calls the area the “attic.”
SpaceX said the sensor recorded an increase in pressure, indicating leakage.
Two minutes later, another flash followed, causing a fire in the attic, shutting down everything except one of the engines. Telemetry from the spacecraft ended 8 minutes and 20 seconds after the lift-off.
SpaceX said the possible cause was stronger rhythmic vibrations than expected. The vibration caused a leak of propellant that could not be fully vented from the attic, leading to fire.
SpaceX said its analysis revealed that the self-destructing system exploded the rocket a few minutes later.
To address the issue during the eight flight, the company said the feed line carrying propellant to the engine will change to reduce vibration. SpaceX also changed the engine's propellant temperature and thrust level to avoid repeated leaks.
For this flight rocket, SpaceX also added a system that purges the area of ​​propellant to reduce the chances of a fire.
The FAA oversaw SpaceX's investigation into what went wrong during its seventh test flight and issued a launch license on its eighth flight on Friday.
On Thursday, the Starship's mammoth booster, or the bottom of the rocket, returned to the launchpad again, just as it was during the previous test flight. It was the third successful catch of a booster with a large mechanical arm of a launch tower called a “chopsticks.”
This time some of them malfunctioned halfway through the upper stage engine before it stopped. Video from the rocket showed views of the Earth and space falls until it was blocked off.
A moment later, a commentator for SpaceX's Livestream said that telemetry from Starship was lost.
SpaceX has recently been having problems with some of the Falcon 9 rockets launched by Florida and California every few days.
On sale in February, the Falcon 9 upper stage failed to run a regular engine burn, as the rocket's body splashed into the sea. Instead, it remained in orbit. The air resistance gradually began to drop, and the stage reentered in Europe 18 days later. No one was injured or injured, but the rocket fragment appears to have landed in Poland.
SpaceX ran into another problem on Sunday night when the Falcon 9 booster landed nicely on an Atlantic barge, but then fell over.
The company reported that “an extranutrition fire at the rear end of the rocket caused one of the booster's landing legs to break, which turned it over.”
NASA plans to use a version of the spacecraft to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon during the Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for 2027.
But if the Trump administration revamps its lunar program or shifts attention to Mars, its mission could be delayed or cancelled.
SpaceX must demonstrate the high reliability of the spacecraft before it is aired.
Hank Sanders contributed the report.
