Another SpaceX Starship prototype broke up over the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, capping the latest bumpy test flight for the rocket central to billionaire Elon Musk’s dream of colonising Mars.
The biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built lifted off at 6.36pm local time from the company’s facility near a southern Texas village that earlier this month voted to become a city also named Starbase.
The first signs of trouble emerged when the first-stage Super Heavy booster blew up instead of executing its planned splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
A live feed then showed the upper-stage spaceship failing to open its doors to deploy a payload of Starlink satellite “simulators”.
Though the ship flew farther than on its two previous attempts, it sprang leaks and began spinning out of control as it coasted through space on a suborbital path before re-entering the atmosphere out of control and eventually breaking apart.
“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” SpaceX posted on X – a familiar euphemism for failure – adding it would learn from the setback.
Musk, meanwhile, vowed to pick up the pace: “Launch cadence for the next three flights will be faster – approximately one every three to four weeks,” he said.
He did not say, however, whether he still planned to deliver a live stream about Mars that SpaceX had been promoting.
Federal regulators granted SpaceX a licence for Starship’s latest flight attempt just four days ago, capping a mishap investigation that had grounded Starship for nearly two months.
Its last two test flights – in January and March – were cut short moments after liftoff as the vehicle blew to pieces on its ascent, raining debris over parts of the Caribbean and disrupting scores of commercial airline flights in the region.
The Federal Aviation Administration expanded debris hazard zones around the ascent path for Tuesday’s launch.
Ahead of the launch, dozens of space fans gathered at Isla Blanca Park on nearby South Padre Island hoping to catch a glimpse of history. Several small tourist boats also dotted the lagoon, while a live feed showed Musk sitting at ground control in Starbase, wearing an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt.
Piers Dawson, 50, an Australian, told AFP he was “obsessed” with the rocket and planned his family vacation around the launch – his first trip to the United States, with his wife and teenage son whom he took out of school to be there.
Another enthusiast Joshua Wingate, a 33-year-old tech entrepreneur from Austin, said after the launch: “I know in science there’s never a failure, you learn everything from every single test so that was still super exciting to see.”
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
