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SpaceX Starship Explodes During Test Flight, Sending Airlines Scrambling To Reroute Flights


The seventh test flight of SpaceX’s marquee rocket, Starship, ended in an unintentional fireworks display. That is, the rocket exploded over the Atlantic Ocean and sent a brilliant stream of debris into the Earth’s atmosphere.

It is not clear what caused the explosion, but the incident was captured on video by people on the ground, forcing the planes to divert their course to avoid the overheated parts of the missiles falling.

The Starship launched from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas at 4:37 p.m. local time on Thursday. The company’s Mechazilla tower managed to catch Starship’s massive (233 feet tall, or 71 meters) Super Heavy booster rocket is the calling card of SpaceX’s bid to make spaceflight a more affordable and sustainable endeavor.

SpaceX lost telemetry with the vehicle before the burn phase was complete. It happened about 8.5 minutes before the flight. According to a SpaceX release, “Preliminary reports indicate a fire at the rear of the craft, which resulted in an unplanned abort.”

In other words, the upper stage of the rocket exploded during the flight. Images of the explosion and its aftermath look like something out of science fiction: streaks of bright orange-yellow light streaking across the sky like so many alien spacecraft. Observers on the ground in the Turks and Caicos Islands and passengers on cruise ships in the Caribbean captured the dramatic footage.

But the explosive tip of the rocket was not just a light show. The Federal Aviation Administration said it “briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the crash site,” with the Starship wreckage creating a “falling debris hazard area.” Flight radar trackers showed several aircraft facing roughly east of the Turks and Caicos Islands at the time of the explosion.

CNBC informed Although flights were delayed and diverted as a result of the explosion, the FAA has not received any reports of injuries or property damage. American Airlines told CNBC that fewer than 10 flights were diverted, while Delta diverted four flights. At least one cargo plane diverted and one Spirit Airlines flight diverted, according to flight tracking websites. The chaos is understandable – no one wants a plane to fly through missile debris.

“Starship flew within the designated launch corridor – as all US launches do to protect the public on the ground, in the water and in the air,” the SpaceX release said. “Any pieces of debris that survived would have fallen into the designated danger zone.”

On X, the social media platform owned by Musk, the multi-billionaire noted that “initial indications are that there was an oxygen/fuel leak in the space above the bulkhead of the ship’s engine, which was large enough to overpressurize the vent capacity. .” Musk added that nothing about the way Flight 7 unfolded suggested the launch of the next Starship would have to be delayed past February.

The seventh flight of the Starship on Earth was successful. The chopstick-like arms of the Mechazilla tower successfully grabbed the Super Heavy rocket booster and pulled it out of the air. Skyward, the seventh flight failed. That’s what you call it when your rocket explodes and rains metal on the ground. But SpaceX will take it seriously. “Success comes from what we learn, and this flight test will help us improve the reliability of Starship as SpaceX strives to make life multiplanetary,” the company said in a release.

Relatedly, Australian carrier Qantas has had to cancel several flights between Australia and South Africa in recent weeks due to warnings about potential space debris from SpaceX launches. informed In The Guardian.

This latest incident could lead to a lengthy FAA investigation. We’ve seen it before: Last year, SpaceX had to do it over a period of time dozens of corrective actions After an FAA investigation into the second Starship flight in November 2023, among other investigations, the tests were inconclusive.

The company is certainly making progress when it comes to flying reusable rockets. The Starship is a solid launch vehicle—proof of NASA’s investment in Starship for the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon.

But there is SpaceX the past its initial goals are to get humans to Mars in 2022 and to fly a billionaire and a handful of artists around the moon (2023). As reported by Inverse, 2025 is the earliest that Elon Musk previously stated that it would be possible to establish a colony on Mars, inhabiting the arid, cold and dusty world by the end of the decade. The clock is ticking, Mr. Musk.





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