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After a brief delay, the world’s largest rocket launched from Texas this morning in what is being described by SpaceX as a major moment for the advancement of rocketship technology. The launch didn’t go exactly to plan, though.
The spacecraft, which had no one aboard and is called Starship, eventually began to spin and later exploded not long after launching. SpaceX referred to the explosion as an intentional “rapid unscheduled disassembly” that occurred before stage separation. You can see the launch and the explosion in the videos below.
This was a development test. The goal was to gather data to help improve reliability of the rocket in the future as part of SpaceX’s plan to “make life multi-planetary,” employees said. The major goal for SpaceX with this test was to simply get off the launch pad, and it did that.
SpaceX also made it clear that the Starship flight path was over water, with all areas cleared prior to launch. SpaceX is working with local authorities to recover what’s left of the craft in the Gulf of Mexico.
The plan for these tests is to have Starship separate from its rocket booster about three minutes into the flight and land in the water near Hawaii over the span of 90 minutes. With this test, though, the craft began to spiral a couple minutes in, so SpaceX engineers manually detonated the prototype. Ensuing tests will aim to have Starship get further into its mission plan. The next test will happen in the coming months.
The first test was supposed to happen on April 17 but was delayed to today, April 20, which was probably funny to company owner Elon Musk who enjoys 4/20 memes.
Starship is SpaceX’s spacecraft that aims to take people to Earth’s orbit, the moon, Mars, and beyond. The spacecraft and the rocket that powers it are intended to be “fully reusable.”
