United States: SpaceX’s uncrewed spacecraft Starship has exploded in space during its second test. The spacecraft, developed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, failed in space shortly after lifting, making it further than an earlier attempt that ended in an explosion.
The two-stage rocketship blasted off from the Elon Musk-owned company’s Starbase launch site near Boca Chica in Texas, on a planned 90-minute uncrewed flight into space. If successful, the rocket would have ended up landing in the Pacific ocean near Hawaii.
The company hopes the rocket can eventually manage a trip around the Earth, which could take an hour and a half. But about two and a half minutes into the flight, the two stages of the spacecraft broke apart. SpaceX soon announced that it could not find a signal from the second stage, which it declared “lost.”
According to reports, the rocket’s self-destruction mechanism was set off after it lost the signal.
Analysis shows that SpaceX’s second flight is an improvement compared to its first test launch, when both stages ultimately exploded four minutes into its flight. During the first attempt in April, the initial stage of the spacecraft, dubbed Super Heavy due to its 33 engines, experienced a failure, resulting in the simultaneous explosion of both stages.
In the recent attempt, Super Heavy’s 33 engines successfully propelled both itself and the second stage, known as the rocket system Starship, into space. Although Starship separated from Super Heavy as intended, an automatic termination system triggered, leading to an explosion.
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