SpaceX company faced yet another setback while doing a test flight of its flagship rocket, Starship
SpaceX Launches Seventh Starship TestFlight
On Thursday, Jan. 16, Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, launched its seventh TestFlight of its Starship rocket. However, it lost communication with the Starship rocket after about 9 minutes into the flight. The Starship rocket had 10 Starlink simulators on board that were planned to be deployed once it had reached space.
SpaceX Confirms Loss of Ship
One of the SpaceX senior managers for quality said, “We can confirm that we did lose the ship.”SpaceX further shared that the ship was broken during the ascent as they continue to review data from the test light to understand the root cause. It is believed that the ship developed fire that resulted in test flight failure, but the findings were still going on at the moment.
Social Media Reaction and Debris in the Atlantic Ocean
Many users on social media posted private photos and videos of what appeared to be a fireball created by the test flight incident near the Caribbean islands. Space X also said that the debris from the resulting incident fell into the Atlantic Ocean, but thankfully, it was within the predefined hazard areas.
FAA Issues Warning and Reviews Incident
As a result of the debris, the FAA issued a warning to pilots of dangerous areas for possible falling debris from Starship rockets. Multiple flights over the Caribbean were turning around, including commercial as well as cargo planes, as seen from different flight tracking websites/mobile apps. Additionally, the FAA confirmed that they are reviewing the SpaceX Starship incident. The FAA has the authority to ground rockets after such failures and ask space companies to perform a proper investigation and place corrective measures so such an incident can be avoided in the future.
SpaceX’s Statement on Starship Incident
SpaceX’s account on the X platform said, “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand the root cause. With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability.”
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SpaceX Faces Setback as Blue Origin Succeeds
This latest setback for SpaceX comes at the time when Blue Origin just launched its first Glenn rocket, and it reached orbit successfully. SpaceX team needs to recover from this setback quickly and take their lessons from this failure while moving forward at the same time.
