Elon Musk’s massive SpaceX Starship exploded minutes after lifting off from Texas on Thursday. This is the second failure this year for Musk’s Mars rocket program.
SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, the company has had 450 landings, 415 of them being successful.
According to SpaceX they are “Working on a next generation of fully reusable launch vehicles that will be the most powerful ever built, capable of carrying humans to Mars and other destinations in the solar system.”
According to The Miami Hurricane “The March 6th launch was part of a mission to release mock satellites into space.” Releasing these mock satellites helps simulate future missions.
However the Starship exploded minutes after takeoff after experiencing an “energetic event” in its aft section, which is the back part of the ship, resulting in the loss of several engines.
According to Fox35, “The Starship launched at 6:30 p.m. and just over eight minutes into the flight, SpaceX reported that a few engines had cut off.” Once you lose enough engines, the Starship will start losing control.
The ship started to spin uncontrollably and ultimately exploded. “Fragments of the Starship streaked through the sky like fireworks, visible as far away as the Caribbean and Pennsylvania.” This is according to Australian Aviation. Many people posted videos on social media of the fiery debris.
According to Fox35 the Starship reached speeds of 12,000 MPH so the debris hitting the ground after the explosion was traveling at 150-400 MPH.
Thankfully, the ship was uncrewed and there have been no reported injuries. According to Hout “We’ve got a lot of measures in place, like debris response areas, where we coordinate very closely with air traffic control.” SpaceX says they put a lot of measures in place before launching a ship to keep the public safe.
However the explosion did cause some difficulties, disrupting 240 flights. Flight delays lasted an average of 28 minutes at the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, and Palm beach airports according to TravelMole.
This is Musk’s second Starship failure this year. Reported by Newsweek “On January 16th, Starship Flight 7 had a leak near a tank containing liquid oxygen.” This leak led to the Starship breaking up into pieces and leaving debris all over the Turks and Caicos island.
Although Elon Musk has had multiple Starship failures, he maintains a positive attitude stating that this is only a minor setback. Musk said that “Progress is measured by time. The next ship will be ready in four to six weeks.”
