Elon Musk’s company SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft is designed to take humans to the Moon and Mars.
But the second test flight of the most powerful rocket in human history also ended in failure.
On November 18, the Starship spacecraft was launched from Texas with no humans on board.
A starship consists of 2 parts, one is a superheavy booster, which is a large rocket with 33 engines, while the other is a starship spacecraft that sits on top of the booster and detaches from it.
Elon Musk’s company’s world’s largest and most powerful rocket has crashed in an experimental flight
In the first stage of the test flight, the Superheavy Booster successfully separated from the spacecraft and exploded, although it had to land in the Gulf of Mexico.
After that, the starship continued to fly for a few minutes and lost contact with it 8 minutes after launch.
During this flight, the Starship spacecraft managed to reach Earth’s orbit and was 92 miles above Earth when it exploded.
The test flight also saw the first test of Hot Staging, SpaceX’s new method of separating the Superheavy Booster from the spacecraft.
Under this procedure, all rocket engines were fired prior to separation from the starship.
The company will now look at how to further improve the process so that superheavy boosters and spacecraft can successfully complete the flight.
It should be noted that earlier on April 20, the Starship rocket exploded 4 minutes after takeoff.
After this failure, the Federal Aviation Administration stopped SpaceX from further experiments with the Starship.
Like the first experiment, the second test flight has also been declared a success by SpaceX.
According to the company, despite the explosion of the superheavy booster and spacecraft, it was a successful day for us, now we have enough data to help improve the next flight.
What is the significance of the starship?
This is the rocket that Elon Musk wants to use to take humans to Mars, and he has been saying that the sole purpose of establishing SpaceX is to develop a Starship-like vehicle that will help humans settle on Mars. can provide
The American space agency NASA has also signed a multi-billion dollar contract with SpaceX to bring humans to the surface of the moon once again through starships.
The rocket is 120 meters long, weighs 5 million kilograms and will be reusable.
SpaceX officials have said in the past that after the company has completed more than 100 test flights of the Starship, humans will be on board.
NASA’s Artemis 3 mission will land humans on the surface of the moon in 2025 and this work will be done with the help of a starship.
