SpaceX’s Starship has failed, again.
Elon Musk’s private rocketry company staged the ninth launch of the craft on Tuesday and notched up one success before leaving the launchpad by re-using a Super Heavy booster for the first time.
SpaceX paused the countdown for Tuesday’s launch at the T-40 mark for some final tweaks, then sent Starship into the sky at 19:37 Eastern Daylight Time.
The Super Heavy did its job and Starship made it into orbit. However, the booster crash-landed, which wasn’t unexpected as SpaceX used a steeper-than-usual angle of attack for its re-entry “to intentionally push Super Heavy to the limits, giving us real-world data about its performance that will directly feed in to making the next generation booster even more capable.”
The craft performed well early in its descent, but telemetry data stopped flowing after SpaceX initiated a landing burn and the rocket crashed into Gulf of Mexico.
Starship coasted in space, but its payload door did not open meaning SpaceX was unable to launch dummy satellites for its own Starlink space broadband service.
The craft then “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly” upon re-entry.
Again, that’s not a disaster as this flight used a reentry profile “designed to intentionally stress the structural limits of the upper stage’s rear flaps while at the point of maximum entry dynamic pressure.” The Starship SpaceX used on this flight also removed “a significant number” of heat-shielding tiles “to stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle during reentry.” The spacecraft also employed “Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling” to test different materials for future missions.
SpaceX boss Elon Musk rated Starship’s re-entry as the most important phase of this flight. Sadly Starship was spinning as it headed back to Earth, so SpaceX was unable to capture all the data it hoped to gather.
Musk nonetheless rated the mission a success.
“Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight!” he Xeeted. “Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent. Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase. Lot of good data to review.”
The billionaire added: “Launch cadence for next 3 flights will be faster, at approximately 1 every 3 to 4 weeks.”
That may be a little optimistic, as the USA’s Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) must authorise Starship launches and is yet to do so for future flights.
Previous Starship missions caused concern in the aviation industry after debris from SpaceX hardware fell to Earth. For this mission the FAA enlarged the Aircraft Hazard Area that aviators avoid after launches. SpaceX’s commentary on the launch made several mentions of the company having secured permission and chosen remote – and therefore safe – locations for touchdowns.
The FAA, however, is not keen to authorize flights until it is satisfied with safety. Three explosive endings in a row could make Musk’s timeline for future launches harder to achieve. ®
Source: The register