SpaceX's massive space rocket system, Starship, lifted off safely Saturday morning, but ended prematurely with an explosion and loss of signal.
The Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft successfully separated after launch, as the Starship ignited its engines and pushed away. That process ultimately destroyed the Super Heavy booster, which erupted in a ball of flames over the Gulf of Mexico. But the Starship spacecraft was able to continue its journey briefly.
The Starship system made it much further into the flight than the first attempt in April. The rocket and spacecraft lifted off from the launch pad at 8 a.m. ET, with the Super Heavy booster igniting all 33 Raptor engines. Even during ground tests, SpaceX has struggled to consistently fire all those engines, grouped at the base of the rocket, at the same time.
The Starship's upper stage had begun its journey Saturday morning, tethered to the top of the Super Heavy first stage, a 70.7-meter-tall rocket. About two and a half minutes after coming to life and jumping off the launch pad, the Super Heavy booster consumed most of its fuel, and the Starship spacecraft fired its own engines and broke away.
The Starship spacecraft used its own six engines to propel itself to higher speeds. SpaceX wanted to send the spacecraft to near-orbit speeds, typically around 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour). The spacecraft climbed to an altitude of about 150 kilometers above the Earth's surface and reached the edge of space.
The US government considers 50 miles above the Earth's surface to be the edge of space. Internationally, the Kármán Line, located 100 kilometers above sea level, is often used to mark the boundary between our planet and space - but there is a lot of gray area.
The SpaceX team waited to receive a signal from the spacecraft, but shared during the livestream that the "second stage was lost."
"The automated flight termination system on the second stage appears to have activated very late in the fire as we were heading toward the Gulf of Mexico," said aerospace engineer John Insprucker.
The flight termination system is essentially a self-destruct feature that SpaceX enabled to prevent the spaceship from veering off course.
"The booster experienced a rapid, unplanned disassembly shortly after stage separation, while Starship's engines were running for several minutes en route to space," SpaceX shared on X, formerly known as Twitter. "With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today's test will help us improve Starship's reliability as SpaceX strives to make life multiplanetary."
The Federal Aviation Administration, which authorized the Starship's test flight today, issued a statement after the test flight.
"An accident occurred during the launch of the SpaceX Starship OFT-2 from Boca Chica, Texas, on Saturday, November 18. The anomaly resulted in the loss of the vehicle. No injuries or damage to public property were reported," an FAA spokesperson said.
The agency will conduct an accident investigation to determine the root cause of the Starship's loss, which is standard procedure.
"A return to flight of the Starship Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA's determination that any system, process or procedure associated with the accident will not adversely affect public safety," the FAA said.
It took more than four months for the FAA to complete its investigation into the latest accident after Starship's test flight in April.
Targets of a spaceship
NASA is investing up to $4 billion in the rocket system with the goal of using the Starship capsule to deliver astronauts to the moon's surface for its Artemis III mission, currently scheduled to launch in 2025.
The goal is to return humans to the moon for the first time in fifty years, and the successful completion of this test flight would have brought the US Space Agency and SpaceX one step closer to that goal.
"Congratulations to the teams who made progress on today's test flight," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson shared on X. "Spaceflight is a daring adventure that requires a can-do attitude and bold innovation. Today's test is an opportunity to learn and then fly again. Together, @NASA and @SpaceX will return humanity to the moon, Mars and beyond."
"Each test represents one step closer to placing the first woman on the moon with the #Artemis III Human spacecraft landing system. I look forward to seeing what we can learn from this test that will bring us closer to the next milestone," said Jim Free, NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development, shared on X.
The failure could mean significant delays for Starship development and its key manifesto missions, especially NASA's Artemis III mission. The US space agency enlisted Starship in 2021 to serve as the lunar lander for that mission.
Hot staging process
The cause of the Starship rocket's failure on Saturday was not immediately clear.
But the booster explosion occurred after a phase called "hot staging" that SpaceX tried for the first time on Saturday.
The method was used to separate the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy rocket after launch.
Nearly all rockets undergo a process called "phase separation" during launch, in which the lower rocket booster diverges from the rest of the rocket or spacecraft.
For example, when SpaceX launches its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, the first stage booster - or the lower part of the rocket - breaks away from the upper part of the rocket less than three minutes into flight. The Falcon 9 does this using pneumatic pushers housed in the rocket's intermediate stage, or black band around the center.
Instead, the Starship spacecraft has started its own engines to push itself away from the Super Heavy booster - and it's essentially a blunt force trauma separation.
It marked a pivotal moment for SpaceX, as hot staging was expected to be "the riskiest part of the flight," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in October.
SpaceX had already said it would consider the mission a success if Starship made it past hot staging.
But after a hot staging, the Super Heavy booster began to tumble out of control and exploded moments later over the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX had hoped to reignite the Super Heavy's engines and guide it to a controlled landing.
"We knew hot staging would be incredibly dynamic," Kate Tice, senior manager of SpaceX Quality Systems Engineering, said during the livestream. We knew there was a chance the booster wouldn't survive, but we're going to take that data and figure out how to make the booster better for the next hot phase."
Initially, the Starship spacecraft continued to move after the separation.
About eight minutes after liftoff, a cheer rang through the mission control as the spacecraft neared the end of its engine burn, sending it on its way to Earth's orbit. But nine minutes after launch, SpaceX clarified that the video signal with Starship had been lost.
And about 11.5 minutes into the flight, the company confirmed it had lost data, indicating Starship did not fly as planned. The spacecraft's flight termination system was then activated to prevent it from veering off course, bringing an early end to the test flight.
If everything had gone according to plan, Starship would have continued to accelerate towards space. The Starship spacecraft would then complete almost a full lap of Earth, aiming to crash into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
The destruction of the vehicle shortly after liftoff was reminiscent of the spacecraft's first launch attempt in April. During that test flight, several of the Super Heavy's engines unexpectedly shut down and the rocket began to spin out of control just minutes after takeoff. SpaceX was forced to activate the system's self-destruct function, blowing up both stages over the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX needed several months to recover from the April accident. The company was forced to rebuild its launch pad, which was torn to pieces by the sheer force of the rocket powering the engines. The company also made upgrades to both the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster.
SpaceX typically embraces fiery mishaps in the early stages of rocket development. The company has long maintained that it can learn how to build a better rocket faster and cheaper by flying - and sometimes exploding - early prototypes rather than relying solely on ground tests and computer models.
After the explosive first test flight in April, SpaceX noted that "success comes from what we learn, and we have learned a tremendous amount."
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