SpaceX Starship prototype explodes on landing after test flight

PanARMENIAN.Net - SpaceX’s Starship prototype has exploded while attempting to land after its test launch from the company’s rocket facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Live video of Wednesday, December 9’s test showed the self-guided rocket landing at speed following a controlled descent before disappearing in a ball of flame, The Guardian reports.

Despite the catastrophic end to the six-and-a-half-minute test, SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk was thrilled. “Mars, here we come!!” he tweeted.

The Starship rocket destroyed in the accident was a 16-storey-tall prototype for the heavy-lift launch vehicle being developed by Musk’s private space company to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on future missions to the moon and Mars.

The test flight had been intended to reach an altitude of 41,000 feet (12,500 metres), propelled by three of SpaceX’s newly developed Raptor engines for the first time. SpaceX did not make clear whether the rocket had flown that high.

Musk said immediately following the landing mishap that the rocket’s “fuel header tank pressure was low” during descent, “causing touchdown velocity to be high”.He added that SpaceX had obtained “all the data we needed” from the test and hailed the rocket’s ascent phase a success.

SpaceX made its first attempt to launch Starship on Tuesday, but a problem with its Raptor engines forced an automatic abort just one second before liftoff.