Two spectacular flights, two spectacular crash landings. The third time was almost the charm.
On Wednesday, SpaceX launched another soaring Starship, a giant next-generation spaceship that Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of the private rocket company, dreams of sending it to Mars. It returned to the ground and settled in one piece, but then lit up in another fiery explosion minutes after landing.
As the sun set over the test site in Boca Chica, Texas, near Brownsville, the latest prototype, called the SN10, took off and its stainless steel case turned a purple hue as it rose a little over ten kilometers approached below the orbital heights SpaceX plans to reach one day.
It was the second attempt to start the day. Three hours earlier, the start was canceled with just a fraction of a second in the countdown. The engines had already ignited, but were then turned off when the computer on board the spaceship detected too much thrust from one of the engines. The engineers decided the problem was not significant, adjusted the software, refueled the missile, and tried again.
Around 6.15 p.m. East Coast time, the three engines re-ignited and this time they stayed on. The missile soared into the Texas skies, and the engines were shut down one by one as the missile approached six miles altitude.
“Very nice, very nice,” said John Insprucker, a SpaceX engineer who shared the company’s webcast.
The spaceship then tipped to a horizontal position, with the belly essentially flapping through the atmosphere and falling back to the ground in a controlled manner. The missile then re-fired its engines to return to a vertical position and slowed to a soft landing.
When the smoke cleared, the SN10 was still standing but it was tilted. Mr. Insprucker declared the test to be successful. While previous flights at this altitude ended in fiery crashes, this time the rocket landed in one piece. But the landing legs seemed to fail, leaving the missile standing, but leaning against the landing pad.
“The most important point of today’s test flight was the collection of the data to control the vehicle upon re-entry,” said Insprucker in the webcast. “And we succeeded.”
A leak in a fuel tank may have caused the explosion.
The previous test on Feb.2 came after a skirmish between SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates rocket launches. The FAA said the launch came in December without the agency’s approval. SpaceX had requested that this flight be waived despite no evidence that a shock wave generated by an explosion during the test would not pose a threat to the public. The FAA denied the request. SpaceX started anyway.
Following an investigation, the FAA allowed SpaceX to resume launch in February. When that flight ended in another crash, the agency again requested an investigation, which apparently had been less difficult. The agency approved the test on Wednesday.
Mr. Musk’s company has grown successful in the startup business and is now one of the most valuable privately owned companies in the world. The Falcon 9 missiles have become a dominant workhorse for sending satellites into orbit. It routinely carries cargo to the International Space Station and has lifted NASA astronauts there twice in 2020. Further trips are planned for this year.
However, many are skeptical of Mr. Musk’s claim that the company is only a few years away from sending a spaceship to Mars, saying he has repeatedly set schedules for SpaceX that have proven far too optimistic about how quickly they will come about arrived.
When he released an update on Starship’s development in 2019, he said that an altitude test would take place within months and that orbital flights could take place in early 2020.
Instead, several catastrophic failures occurred due to faulty welding. When the fuel tanks stopped bursting, two of the prototypes made short successful flights last year. These earlier Starship prototypes resembled spray paint cans with the labels removed and soared nearly 500 feet on a single rocket engine before being returned to the test site in Texas.
In a video released Tuesday night, Musk said Starship would be ready to put humans into orbit and beyond by 2023. He made the remarks in a video posted by Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese entrepreneur who helps finance the development of Spaceship. Mr. Maezawa intends to fly around the moon and back to earth for about a week.
In Tuesday’s video, Mr. Maezawa announced that he would take eight passengers on the lunar voyage and invited applications from people who wanted to leave. On Wednesday, he said more than 100,000 people have already expressed an interest.
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