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(Reuters)- After its take off from Texas, SpaceX's gigantic Starship spacecraft exploded in the air, marking the second failure of Elon Musk's Mars rocket program this year. Following this, the FAA was required to suspend air travel in portions of Florida.
As per a Spacex live stream of the mission, shortly after Starship started to rotate erratically and turn its engines off, several social media videos captured the fiery debris tearing through the sky of South Florida and the Bahamas.
This failure has come just over a month after the seventh also failed epically, with both back to back failures occurring during the initial stages of the mission. Musk had tried to speed these up this year, but it seems to have acted as a setback instead. These phases were routinely crossed with ease by SpaceX in the prior years.
Stored in Musk's plans is the 403 foot rocket system, with primary intentions of sending people to mars around the decade's turn.
On Friday, Musk declared the explosion a “minor setback” stating progress is defined by time. In response to other users on his platform, he continued to say, “the next ship will be ready in 4 to 6 weeks”.
Due to “space launch debris,” the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights at the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and Orlando airports, sparing them from the danger. Additionally, they opened a mischievous investigation involving the matter.
At approximately 6:30 p.m. ET, the SpaceX rocket launched from its Boca Chica, Texas rocket facilities. The initial Super Heavy booster also launched successfully, and was subsequently repossessed midair by a SpaceX crane.
While some things went according to plan, the live stream showed the Starship upper stage spinning in space while other visualizations showed the rocket’s engines shutting down. During this time, the company announced that they lost contact with the ship, only for the announcers to connect the dots to the last flight.
SpaceX's media relations manager stated that “unfortunately this happened last time too, so we've got some practice now,” during the live stream.
SpaceX explained that Starship experienced an “energetic event” that detonated into the loss of multiple propulsion systems, leading to attitude control and communication termination with Starship. The company also stated that contact with the Starship was lost around 9 minutes and 30 seconds after takeoff.
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