Monthly Archives: March 2024

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday granted SpaceX a license that allows the company to launch its massive Starship rocket again, possibly as early as 8 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, though weather at its South Texas facilities could force a delay.

The flight would be the third attempt to reach orbit for the worlds most powerful rocket, a towering two-stage vehicle that NASA intends to use to land astronauts on the moon. During the first test flight, in April of last year, the vehicle blew up its launchpad, started tumbling after liftoff and eventually exploded. SpaceX which follows an iterative approach to the development of its systems, allowing them to fail and then trying again quickly flew a second attempt in November that showed improvement, though the rocket self-destructed before reaching orbit.

The vehicle, collectively called Starship, comprised the Super Heavy booster and a spacecraft that sits on top. It is designed to be fully reusable, landing back at its launch site. NASA is investing about $4 billion into the system and intends to use it for the first human landings on the moon since the Apollo era.

In a statement, SpaceX said that the 110-minute launch window would open at 8 a.m. Eastern and that its webcast would go live about 30 minutes before.

On Starships last flight, upgrades to the launchpad, including a water suppression system, allowed it to survive the violence of takeoff, when all of the rockets 33 first-stage engines successfully ignited. The vehicle made it through stage separation, and the upper-stage engines fired as well. But as the booster started to ignite 13 of its engines to fly the rocket back to Earth, one engine failed, quickly cascading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly, the phrase SpaceX uses to describe a loss of vehicle. The spacecraft was lost after a leak led to a fire and its autonomous onboard flight termination system destroyed the vehicle.

After the flight, the FAA oversaw SpaceXs investigation and said in February that it had accepted the companys report. As a result, the FAA required SpaceX to complete 17 corrective actions, including hardware redesigns, updates to engine-control algorithms and the installation of fire protection measures.

SpaceX said that upgrades derived from the flight test will debut on the next Starship and Super Heavy vehicles. It added in a subsequent statement that each of these flight tests continue to be just that: a test. They arent occurring in a lab or on a test stand but are putting flight hardware in a flight environment to maximize learning.

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SpaceXs Starship gets FAA approval for third test flight - The Washington Post

SpaceXs Starship rocket launches for a third time in program history on Thursday, March 14, 2024. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

SpaceXs Starship rocket took to the skies over Texas for a third time Thursday morning. The launch, approved on Wednesday afternoon by the Federal Aviation Administration, managed to navigate some tricky weather on its ascent.

Liftoff of the worlds tallest rocket currently flying took place at 8:25 a.m. CT (9:25 a.m. ET, 1325 UTC), towards the back end of a 110-minute window. The vehicle was stacked for launch late last week at SpaceXs Starbase launch and manufacturing site in southern Texas near Brownsville.

The mission represents the shortest time between second and third flights for a commercial, orbital rocket. Both the Falcon 1 and the Falcon 9 spent more than a year between those two flights.

This mission flew a markedly different flight path compared to the previous two missions. SpaceX sent the Ship 28 upper stage nearly halfway around the world, with a splash down in the middle of the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar, as the intended target.

SpaceX lost contact with Ship 28 nearly an hour after liftoff, but before its intended splashdown. The Super Heavy Booster 10 first stage also fell just short of reaching its full own full splashdown profile in the Gulf of Mexico.

In a similar fashion to the crewed launches at NASAs Kennedy Space Center, a group of astronauts also performed a flyby of the rocket currently perched on the Orbital Launch Mount at Starbase ahead of the launch. This time, it was a pair of jets owned by businessman Jared Isaacman, which carried the crew of the forthcoming Polaris Dawn mission.

The third flight of the Polaris program is set to feature the first crewed launch of a Starship rocket.

Unlike the first two flights of Starship, the FAA issued a pair of primary documents connected to this mission: a Tiered Environmental Assessment and a Finding of No Significant Impact/Record of Decision (FONSI/ROD).

The FONSI concluded that pivoting to a splashdown in the Indian Ocean as opposed to off the coast of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean (as was the aim for the first two Starship launches) would not significantly impact the quality of the human environment within the meaning of NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act of 1969).

Because of that, the FAA determined that they wouldnt need to create a new Environmental Impact Statement. The FAA also agreed with SpaceXs proposed action that would allow for a total of ten nominal operations, including up to a maximum of five overpressure events from Starship intact impact and up to a total of five reentry debris or soft water landings in the Indian Ocean, within a year of issuance of a concurrence letter from that National Marine Fisheries Service.

In response to a post on X, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said that they were aiming for at least six more flights this year.

Ramping up the cadence of Starship flights is going to be important not only for SpaceXs ambitions with the program, but also for NASA.

Starship needs to launch several times successfully to prove its viability to work as the lander that will bring NASAs astronauts to the surface of the Moon during the Artemis 3 mission, which is currently set for September 2026.

Before that happens though, they will need to perfect the ability to transfer propellant from one Starship rocket to another, which in and of itself will require 10 launches or more. SpaceX will also need to perform an uncrewed landing on the Moon, which is currently scheduled for sometime in 2026 as well.

During IFT-3, teams also performed a propellant transfer demonstration within the Ship 28 upper stage. SpaceX also intended to demonstrate a relight of one of the Ship Raptor engines as well as open and close the payload bay door during the coast phase of the mission, but they had to skip the engine demo.

In an effort to help long-term infrastructure, SpaceX is also exploring acquiring Space Launch Complex-37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as a possible launch site for Starship once its no longer supporting United Launch Alliances (ULA) Delta 4 Heavy rocket.

The Department of the Air Force (DAF) is overseeing this process and recently held in-person, public meetings along Floridas Space Coast as well as a virtual meeting. All the comments gathered will be assessed against the proposal and a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) will be issued in December 2024 with a final EIS anticipated by September 2025.

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SpaceX launches Starship on the third flight test of the program Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

SpaceX's latest Starship megarocket is poised for its highly anticipated liftoff.

SpaceX has stacked the 400-foot-tall (122 meters) vehicle on the pad at its Starbase site in South Texas, the company announced via X today (March 12). That post also included two photos of the newly stacked Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built.

Stacking is a big step toward launch, which SpaceX has said could occur as soon as Thursday (March 14).

Related: SpaceX fuels up massive Starship megarocket in test for 3rd launch (photos)

SpaceX is developing Starship to help humanity settle the moon and Mars. The fully reusable vehicle has flown twice before, on test missions in April and November of last year. Both of those flights aimed to send the Starship upper stage most of the way around Earth, with splashdown targeted for a patch of the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

That didn't happen, however. Starship's two stages failed to separate during the April flight, and SpaceX detonated the tumbling vehicle intentionally about four minutes after launch. Starship did much better on flight number two, notching a number of important milestones, but both stages still ended up exploding high in the sky.

The upcoming third flight will employ a different trajectory: The target splashdown site for the Starship upper stage is the Indian Ocean rather than the Pacific.

SpaceX will also try a few other new things during the mission, among them "opening and closing Starship's payload door" and "a propellant transfer demonstration during the upper stage's coast phase,"SpaceXwrote in amission description.

While SpaceX is working toward a planned March 14 launch, that target date remains tentative at the moment.

As far as we know, SpaceX still doesn't have a launch license from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. The agency recently wrapped up its investigation into what happened on the November 2023 test flight, but a few boxes apparently still need to be checked.

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SpaceX stacks Starship ahead of 3rd test flight (photos) - Space.com

Louisiana residents who were up and at it early Tuesday morning were able to see an amazing sight. NASA's SpaceX Crew 7 splashed down Tuesday morning around 4:45 a.m. The Dragon splashed down near Pensacola, but residents across Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana could see the spacecraft streaking across the sky. The crew had been in space for six months on the International Space Station conducting research. Slidell resident Terry Alfonso Allen captured video of the spacecraft making its landing. Watch his video in the player above.

Louisiana residents who were up and at it early Tuesday morning were able to see an amazing sight.

NASA's SpaceX Crew 7 splashed down Tuesday morning around 4:45 a.m.

The Dragon splashed down near Pensacola, but residents across Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana could see the spacecraft streaking across the sky.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

The crew had been in space for six months on the International Space Station conducting research.

Slidell resident Terry Alfonso Allen captured video of the spacecraft making its landing.

Watch his video in the player above.

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Louisiana man captures video of SpaceX crew returning to earth - WDSU New Orleans

TAMPA, Fla. SpaceX has secured conditional approval to use extremely high-frequency E-band radio waves to improve the capacity of its low Earth orbit Starlink broadband constellation.

The Federal Communications Commission said March 8 it is allowing SpaceX to use E-band frequencies between second-generation Starlink satellites and gateways on the ground, alongside already approved spectrum in the Ka and Ku bands.

Specifically, SpaceX is now also permitted to communicate between 71 and 76 gigahertz from space to Earth, and 81-86 GHz Earth-to-space, using the up to 7,500 Gen2 satellites SpaceX is allowed to deploy.

SpaceX has plans for 30,000 Gen2 satellites, on top of the 4,400 Gen1 satellites already authorized by the FCC.

However, the FCC deferred action in December 2022 on whether to allow SpaceX to deploy the other three-quarters of its Gen2 constellation, which includes spacecraft closer to Earth to improve broadband speeds.

The regulator also deferred action at the time on SpaceXs plans to use E-band frequencies, citing a need to first establish ground rules for using them in space.

In a March 8 regulatory filing, the FCC said it found SpaceXs proposed operations in the E-band present no new or increased frequency conflicts with other satellite operations.

But the order comes with multiple conditions, including potentially forcing SpaceX to modify operations if another satellite operator also seeks to use the radio waves.

Starlink satellites use Ku-band to connect user terminals. In October, the FCC allowed SpaceX to also provide fixed-satellite services from Gen2 spacecraft using V-band spectrum, which like E-band is also extremely high frequency (EHF) and in its commercial infancy.

Higher frequency spectrum bands promise more bandwidth and throughput as they become increasingly subject to weather attenuation and other issues.

Last year, SpaceX said using E-band radio waves for backhaul would enable Starlink Gen2 to provide about four times more capacity per satellite than earlier iterations, without elaborating.

There are currently around 1900 Starlink satellites launched under the Gen2 license in orbit, according to spacecraft tracker and astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell about two-thirds of these satellites are significantly larger and more powerful than Gen1 but smaller than full-scale versions slated to launch on SpaceXs Starship vehicle. Around 3,600 separate satellites in orbit are classed as Gen1.

The FCC continues to defer action over whether to allow SpaceX to deploy the other 22,500 satellites in its proposed Gen2 constellation.

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SpaceX gets E-band radio waves to boost Starlink broadband - SpaceNews

The four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-7 mission returned to Earth early Tuesday morning (March 12), with their homecoming broadcast live.

Crew-7's Dragon capsule, Endurance, splashed down at 5:50 a.m. EDT (0950 UTC) off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. The recovery crew arrived at the capsule around three minutes later, with thermal cameras tracking the recovery operations.

Related: SpaceX Crew-7 astronauts undock from ISS for return to Earth

The parachutes that had guided Endurance back to Earth were recovered with the recovery crew checking for both pyrotechnic residuals and poisonous materials. After these safety checks, the Dragon capsule was lifted from the Gulf of Mexico onto a recovery ship at 6:13 a.m. EDT (1013 GMT) using a hydraulic lift.

The Crew-7 astronauts exited the Endurance Dragon capsule at 6:36 a.m. EDT (1036 UTC), with Andy Mogensen assisted from the capsule first. After 199 days in low-Earth orbit and their descent back to Earth, the crew will visit a medical facility to check their health.

Endurance undocked from the International Space Station on Monday (March 11) after the astronauts' 6.5-month stay on the orbiting laboratory to begin Crew-7's journey home.

Crew-7 consists of NASA astronaut JasminMoghbeli, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Satoshi Furukawa and Konstantin Borisov, a cosmonaut with Russia's space agency,Roscosmos.

The mission launched to the ISS atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Aug. 26, 2023 and arrived at the orbiting complex a day later. The liftoff kicked off the first spaceflight for Moghbeli and Borisov and the second for Mogensen and Furukawa.

The Crew-7 quartet overlapped briefly with their successors, the four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-8 mission, which arrived at the ISS last Tuesday (March 5).

As those mission names suggest, SpaceX has now launched eight operational astronaut flights to the ISS for NASA (plus one crewed test flight to the orbiting lab). The agency selected SpaceX for this job in September 2014.

Aerospace giant Boeing got a commercial crew contract back then as well, but has not yet flown an astronaut mission for NASA. That should change soon, however: The first astronaut flight of Boeing's Starliner capsule is scheduled to launch in early May.

That mission, called Crew Flight Test, will send two astronauts to the ISS for a roughly 10-day stay.

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SpaceX's Crew-7 capsule returns 4 astronauts to Earth with predawn splashdown (video) - Space.com

SpaceXs Starship taking off on 14 March

SpaceX

SpaceXs third and most ambitious Starship test flight appeared to be at least a partial success today as it reached space, carried out fuel transfer tests and travelled further and faster than ever before. But the craft failed to make its scheduled landing and appears to have either self-destructed or burned up in Earths atmosphere.

After lift-off from SpaceXs site at Boca Chica, Texas, the first and second stages separated cleanly and the first stage the booster that lifts it on the first part of its journey began descending for a landing at sea. SpaceX ultimately intends to recover and re-use both stages, but in these early test flights they are both destined for a safer and easier ocean ditching.

While the first stage steered itself on the descent it seemingly struggled to slow its fall as intended and appeared to hit the sea at speed.

The second stage went on to reach an altitude of around 230 kilometres and successfully opened and closed its payload door as a test. It also shuffled fuel from one tank to another as an experimental first step towards the eventual refuelling of one Starship by another, which will be vital for long-range missions.

But during re-entry the craft reached extremely high temperatures, with live video showing glowing plasma around its surface, and both video and telemetry data was lost.

The craft had been due to attempt to relight its Raptor engines which has never been done in space before for a controlled re-entry to Earths atmosphere starting at almost 27,000 kilometres per hour. But this re-light part of the mission was skipped by the company, and the craft was subsequently lost.

A view of SpaceXs Starship captured 9 minutes into the mission

SpaceX

The US Federal Aviation Administration granted permission for the test flight on 13 March, the day before the planned launch, and tweeted that SpaceX had met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements.

Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built. Its 121-metre length is made up of two stages: a booster and a spacecraft, both of which are designed to be reusable to keep costs low and enable fast turnarounds between flights.

The Starship heating up as it re-entered Earths atmosphere after about 47 minutes of flight, leading to the loss of the spacecraft

SpaceX

Todays launch was the companys third with Starship. It follows the first test in April last year, which exploded before the first and second stages could separate, and another in November that saw the second, upper stage reach space but self-destruct when it stopped transmitting data, with the first stage blowing up just after separation.

The ultimate aim of the project is to put humans on the moon and, later, Mars.

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Starship launch: Third flight reaches space but is lost on re-entry - New Scientist

Updated 5 p.m. Eastern with additional information and reactions.

WASHINGTON SpaceXs Starship vehicle lifted off on its third test flight March 14, making significant progress compared to its first two by achieving most of its planned test milestones.

The Starship/Super Heavy vehicle lifted off from the companys Starbase site at 9:25 a.m. Eastern. The liftoff was delayed by nearly an hour and a half because of ships in restricted waters offshore. SpaceX reported no technical issues during the countdown.

The Super Heavy booster fired all 33 of its Raptor engines for nearly three minutes before executing hot staging, with the Starship upper stages engines igniting while still attached to Super Heavy before separating.

The booster then performed burns to attempt what SpaceX webcast hosts called a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, where it would not be recovered. However, the landing burn did not appear to go correctly, and the company later said that the booster broke apart 462 meters above the ocean after lighting several Raptor engines for a landing burn.

The Starship upper stage performed its burn, placing the vehicle onto its planned suborbital trajectory. It avoided the fate of the previous Starship launch in November, when the vehicle broke apart late in its burn after catching fire while venting propellant.

While in space on its suborbital trajectory, SpaceX opened a payload bay door that will be used on later Starship vehicles for deploying Starlink satellites. It also performed an in-space propellant transfer demonstration as part of a NASA contract where it would move propellant from one tank within the vehicle to another. SpaceX said it was evaluating the data from both tests.

SpaceX had planned to perform a brief relight of a Raptor engine on Starship about 40 minutes after liftoff, but the company said on the webcast that this test was skipped for reasons not immediately known. The company later said the engine test was called off because of the vehicles roll rates.

Several minutes later, the vehicle started reentry. A camera mounted on a flap on Starship provided dramatic images of the reentry, relayed through Starlink satellites. Telemetry was lost about 49 and a half minutes after liftoff when the vehicle was descending through an altitude of 65 kilometers. SpaceX later said on the webcast that it lost contact through both its own Starlink satellites as well as through NASA TDRSS data relay satellites at the same time, speculating that the vehicle may have broken up.

While the mission did not achieve all its test objectives, the company considered the launch a success. What we achieved on this flight will provide invaluable data to continue rapidly developing Starship, it said in a statement.

NASA agreed with that assessment. Congrats to SpaceX on a successful test flight! Starship has soared into the heavens, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson posted on social media. The agency is closely following Starships development since it awarded contracts to SpaceX worth about $4 billion to develop versions of Starship for its Human Landing System program to be used starting with Artemis 3 as soon as late 2026.

Congratulations to our colleagues at SpaceX on their third Starship flight test! said Cathy Koerner, NASA associate administrator for exploration systems development. Lessons learned from this milestone take us one step closer to returning astronauts to the lunar surface with Human Landing Systems provided by U.S. industry.

There was praise across the Atlantic as well. SpaceX continues to push the boundaries and the U.S. continues to set a model for how public and private can join forces to meet societal needs and boost commercialization within the space industry, said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, noting that his agency was drawing from that experience for its own upcoming launcher competition.

The launch came after a final regulatory milestone, an update Federal Aviation Administration launch license, issued late in the day March 13. The license required an additional environmental review after SpaceX changed the vehicles trajectory from the first two integrated test flights, targeting a splashdown in the Indian Ocean rather than near Hawaii.

That environmental assessment revealed that SpaceX expected Starship to explosively break apart upon splashdown. While Starship would vent some propellant while in space before reentry, the assessment stated that the company expected to have 70,000 kilograms of liquid oxygen and methane propellants in its main tanks and 30,650 kilograms in header tanks in the nose of the vehicle.

Starship would impact the Indian Ocean intact, horizontally, and at terminal velocity, the environmental assessment states. The impact would disperse settled remaining propellants and drive structural failure of the vehicle. The structural failure would immediately lead to failure of the transfer tube, which would allow the remaining liquid oxygen (LOX) and methane to mix, resulting in an explosive event.

The assessment noted that SpaceX did not plan to recover any Starship debris or have any boats or aircraft in the area to monitor the reentry and splashdown. It added that any debris is expected to have sufficient mass to sink to the seafloor.

The different trajectory allowed the company to perform tests such as the first in-space firing of the Raptor engine. Flying a steeper suborbital trajectory, with a planned maximum altitude of 235 kilometers, allows a test without substantially altering the splashdown location and threatening public safety, SpaceX hosts said on the companys launch webcast.

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Starship lifts off on third test flight - SpaceNews

NATIONWIDE SpaceX was able to successfully launch Starship on Thursday morning and while the spacecraft itself was in space for the first time, it was lost while orbiting the planet. Its exact fate is currently unknown after the company stated it was not sending out a signal.

The liftoff happened at 9:25 a.m. ET with a mixture of cheers from the Starship team heard over SpaceX's live feed and the roar of the Starship's Raptor engines.

The launch took place at SpaceXs Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

Collectively known as Starship, the first-stage rockets 33 Raptor engines, fueled with thousands of tons of sub-cooled liquid oxygen and liquid methane, lit up as it went into the sky.

The new hot stage separation worked as designed, just like during the second launch attempt in November 2023. While it worked last time, it resulted in the rocket being destroyed. (Please see below for more.)

The first-stage Super Heavy rocket had a hard-water landing in the Gulf of Mexico, confirmed SpaceX. The damage to it is unknown.

The Starship spacecraft was doing various tests while in orbit, including the opening and closing of the payload door, affectionately known as the "Pez door".

At one point, the Starship was traveling 40 miles (65 kilometers) above the round Earth and moving at 15,973 mph (25,707 kmh).

The plan was for Starship to have a water landing in the Indian Ocean. However, about 51 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX announced on its live feed, "We are making the call now that we have lost ship 28."

The ship's signal back down to the team was lost and SpaceX confirmed that it would take a "little bit of time" to find out what exactly happened to the ship.

SpaceX admitted during its live feed that there was always a chance the Starship and the Super Heavy rocket would not survive their splashdowns.

However, SpaceX considered that the third flight test made some accomplishments, some not seen before:

SpaceX stated it will review the data that was collected and use that for the next Starship test.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called it a "successful test flight" of the Starship on X.

"Together, we are making great strides through Artemis to return humanity to the Moonthen look onward to Mars," Nelson stated about NASA's and SpaceX's plans.

Later after the launch test, Federal Aviation Administration stated that it will be investigating the Starship flight.

"No public injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA is overseeing the SpaceX-led mishap investigation to ensure the company complies with its FAA-approved mishap investigation plan and other regulatory requirements," the FAA stated. "The FAA will be involved in every step of the mishap investigation process and must approve SpaceXs final report, including any corrective actions."

The launch did not go off on time due to wind concerns and giving boats in the splashdown areas time to get out of the way.

The 110-minute launch window was originally set for 8 a.m. ET, but SpaceX pushed the time back to 8:02 a.m. ET. Then SpaceX pushed it to 9:10 a.m. ET, so that boats in the splash down zones had time to move out of the area, stated SpaceX.

On Wednesday afternoon, the California-based company announced that it would be testing its 397-foot-tall stacked Starship for a third time on Thursday from its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

SpaceX was waiting for the FAA to grant its approval for the third flight attempt. The company announced last week that it was aiming for Thursday for the launch date.

SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk posted on X, stating that "Starship will make life multiplanetary."

Starship is where SpaceXs hopes and dreams are stored. If all goes well, it will take humans back to Earths moon and eventually, it will go to Mars.

It is a two-stage heavy lift launch rocket that will be a fully reusable transportation system to carry humans and cargo into space. The rocket is known as the Super Heavy and the spacecraft is called Starship, but collectively, they are known as Starship.

Both the Super Heavy rocket, with its 33 Raptor engines fueled by thousands of tons of sub-cooled liquid oxygen and liquid methane, and the Starship are designed to be reusable.

The Starship is planned to carry 100 crew members and cargo to Earth orbit, the moon and eventually Mars,according to the ships user guide.

For the third test, SpaceX stated it built on the two previous launches and planned to showoff a series of demonstrations.

The third flight test aims to build on what weve learned from previous flights while attempting a number of ambitious objectives, including the successful ascent burn of both stages, opening and closing Starships payload door, a propellant transfer demonstration during the upper stages coast phase, the first ever re-light of a Raptor engine while in space, and a controlled reentry of Starship. It will also fly a new trajectory, with Starship targeted to splashdown in the Indian Ocean, SpaceX explained.

If things had gone according to plan, this would have been Starship's flight path.

SpaceXs first launch attempt of Starship happened on April 2023, which saw a series of failures that caused the rocket to explode.

The FAA issued a series of requirements before the California-based company could try again, which included 63 corrective actions.

For the second test in November 2023, SpaceX was forced to blow up Starship.

The new stage separation, called hot stage separation, worked as designed, but it resulted in the Super Heavy rockets destruction.

Following stage separation, Super Heavy initiated its boostback burn, which sends commands to 13 of the vehicles 33 Raptor engines to propel the rocket toward its intended landing location. During this burn, several engines began shutting down before one engine failed energetically, quickly cascading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly of the booster, SpaceX described.

SpaceX believed the likely cause of the booster blowing up was a filter blockage where liquid oxygen fuel goes to the engines.

Minutes later after the hot stage separation, SpaceX could not regain a signal to the Starship spacecraft and the company was forced to destroy it.

A leak in the aft section of the spacecraft that developed when the liquid oxygen vent was initiated resulted in a combustion event and subsequent fires that led to a loss of communication between the spacecrafts flight computers. This resulted in a commanded shut down of all six engines prior to completion of the ascent burn, followed by the Autonomous Flight Safety System detecting a mission rule violation and activating the flight termination system, leading to vehicle breakup, the company stated.

SpaceX stated it has corrected the issues (17 corrective actions) that occurred during the second flight attempt.

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SpaceX successfully launches Starship but loses spacecraft while in orbit - News 13 Orlando