Musk’s Starship exploded a few kilometers from the ocean
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The entrepreneur’s team called the flight a success
The 122-meter Starship exploded during landing. This happened on March 14 at the time of deorbit, over the Indian Ocean. Elon Musk’s team called the third test flight of the largest system for transporting people and cargo into orbit, as well as to the Moon and Mars, successful.
Let us recall that since 2019, the new Starship system has been tested more than 10 times, “attempts to throw” the ship itself with its subsequent return and soft landing were carried out seven times. Not everything went smoothly: several times the ship exploded in the air, twice upon impact with the surface of the landing site, there was not enough engine thrust, or there was a fuel leak.
The first partially successful launch was made on April 20, 2023, but in the fourth minute, after flying several tens of kilometers, the rocket and the ship entered an uncontrolled rotation. The stage was unable to separate and the rocket was destroyed. Musk gave the command to explode the complex in the air so that when it falls it does not damage the launch pad.
On November 18 last year, the system successfully launched for the second time. 33 first stage engines operated normally. The stages separated at an altitude of 70 km at the 2nd minute 45th second of flight time, after which the first stage exploded due to sudden overloads after separation.
Starship’s third orbital flight was planned to include tests of the payload hatch and a demonstration of internal fuel transfer and in-space restart of the Raptor engine. The ship’s splashdown in the Indian Ocean was expected an hour and four minutes after launch.
As a result, in the third test flight, SpaceX specialists managed to make a “jump” to near space without leaving the distance during the first stage of the flight, as happened in the previous two launches in 2023. However, the engine restart test failed, as did the soft landing in the Indian Ocean. According to preliminary data, the ship burned down before reaching the ground several kilometers.
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