Today's Edition
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Hours after Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin nailed its first-ever orbital mission, SpaceX regained the spotlight on Thursday as its latest test of Starship, its gargantuan next-generation mega-rocket, ended with the upper stage dramatically disintegrating over the Atlantic.
In terms of sheer excitement, Elon Musk's company didn't disappoint, underscoring its technical prowess by catching the first stage booster in the "chopstick" arms of its launch tower for a second time.
But the triumph was short-lived when teams lost contact with the upper-stage vehicle. SpaceX later confirmed it had undergone "rapid unscheduled disassembly," the company's euphemism for an explosion.
A taller, improved version of the biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built blasted off from the company's Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, at 4:37 pm (2237 GMT) for its seventh test.
The gleaming prototype rocket is key to Musk's ambitions of colonizing Mars, while NASA hopes to use a modified version as a human lunar lander.
Around seven minutes after liftoff, the Super Heavy booster decelerated from supersonic speeds—generating sonic booms—before descending gracefully into the launch tower's waiting arms, prompting an eruption of applause from ground control teams.
The manoeuvre was first successfully executed in October, but not November, when Super Heavy made a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico instead.
However, soon after the latest booster catch, announcers on a live webcast confirmed the upper-stage vehicle had been lost following a propulsion anomaly.
The FlightAware tracker showed several planes in the Atlantic altering course near the Turks and Caicos Islands, while users on X shared dramatic footage purportedly capturing the spaceship breaking apart in a fiery cascade during atmospheric re-entry.
"Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!" Musk wrote on X, sharing one of the clips. He added the cause of the explosion appeared to be an "oxygen/fuel leak" and that the company would take corrective steps.
A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesperson said the agency "briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling."
