Musk said that feature took longer than expected to blow up the rocket, ensuring it didn’t careen off course, and that the flight termination system would need to be re-certified. The vehicle’s flight termination, or self-destruct, feature was triggered, exploding the spacecraft and booster over the Gulf of Mexico. The company described what happened as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” - its oft-used euphemism for an explosive mishap. Minutes after liftoff, the spacecraft was expected to separate from the rocket booster, but the Super Heavy “vehicle experienced multiple engines out during the flight test, lost altitude, and began to tumble,” according to SpaceX. Was the SpaceX launch really a 'success'? The Starship capsule had been scheduled to separate from the first-stage rocket booster three minutes into the flight but separation failed to occur and the rocket blew up. The rocket successfully blasted off at 8:33 am Central Time (1333 GMT). TOPSHOT - The SpaceX Starship explodes after launch for a flight test from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on April 20, 2023. In the test mission, SpaceX’s Starship launched toward space atop a Super Heavy rocket booster. The explosion in midair also prompted a federal investigation that could take weeks or months to complete. He later added that when the rocket’s engines - 30 out of 33 of which fired on for the flight test - reached “full thrust,” it “probably shattered the concrete.” Musk said he was “glad to report that the pad damage is actually quite small,” though it would take “six to eight weeks” to get the infrastructure prepared for another launch. The April 20 liftoff of Starship, as the vehicle is called, was tremendously powerful, causing some damage to SpaceX’s launchpad in South Texas. “The outcome was roughly in (line) with what I expected and, maybe slightly exceeded my expectations,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said during a Twitter Spaces chat on Saturday evening. Since SpaceX’s inaugural test flight of the most powerful rocket ever constructed, the company’s engineers, federal regulators and environmentalists have been trying to assess the aftermath of the spacecraft’s explosion and what happens next.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |