Elon Musk puts on the greatest show on Earth in the sky

On January 16, Elon Musk's SpaceX conducted the seventh test launch of the rocket with a prototype of the Starship spacecraft. After some time, company representatives announced the loss of part of the reusable super-heavy rocket. Contact with the second stage of Starship was lost approximately 8.5 minutes into the flight.

A rapid unplanned destruction of Starship occurred while gaining altitude, the SpaceX press service said.

SpaceX lost the upper part of Starship, while the lower part returned to Earth. This was possible due to the capture of this part by special mechanical devices at the cosmodrome.

The test launch of the ship was supposed to be Starship's first attempt to deliver cargo into space. If successful, the launch would have marked an important milestone in preparing the ship for practical use.

"Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity," Elon Musk said in a post on X platform.

Engineers are double-checking for leaks. They will also add a fire suppression system and increase the vent area, the entrepreneur added.

The US Federal Aviation Administration may want a detailed investigation into the circumstances of the incident. The next Starship launch may thus be postponed.

Details

Starship is a two-stage fully reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by American aerospace company SpaceX. On April 20, 2023, with the first Integrated Flight Test, Starship became the most massive, tallest, and most powerful vehicle ever to fly. SpaceX has developed Starship with the intention of lowering launch costs using economies of scale, aiming to achieve this by reusing both rocket stages by "catching" them with the launch tower's systems, increasing payload mass to orbit, increasing launch frequency, mass-manufacturing the rockets and adapting it to a wide range of space missions. Starship is the latest project in SpaceX's reusable launch system development program and plan to colonize Mars.