Minutes after its launch, ground control lost contact with the spacecraft, and it broke apart, causing fiery debris that led to the halting of air traffic at several Florida airports.
For what reason did the SpaceX Starship explode?
Almost two months after a similar incident, Thursday’s mishap became the second failure for the company owned by billionaire Elon Musk.
The 403-foot (123-meter) rocket took off from the SpaceX Boca Chica facility in Texas at around 6:30 p.m. local time (2330 GMT).
The first stage of the flight was successful, with the booster separating and flying back to Earth to be caught in midair by a crane. However, the upper part of the Starship began to spin as multiple engines shut down.
“Unfortunately, this happened last time too, so we’ve got some practice now,” SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said during the SpaceX live stream of the event.
Will Musk succeed in traveling to Mars?
Both tests this year failed at stages previously passed by prior tests, representing a setback for Musk’s plan to accelerate the program in 2025.
The January launch resulted in an explosion after approximately eight minutes, causing debris to fall on various Caribbean islands and inflicting minor damage to a car in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Musk aims to send humans to Mars by the end of the decade, with the Starship program being a key component of that plan.
The Federal Aviation Administration stated that SpaceX would need to investigate the incident in order to receive approval for any future flights.
Edited by: Roshni Majumdar
