Not long ago, SpaceX finally conducted the first orbital flight test of Starship, but it did not succeed in reaching the orbit. Now Elon Musk, the founder of this company, has shared new details about this test and claimed that the explosion of this rocket did not go as expected.
According to TechCrunch, during the Starship mission, when the first stage section was supposed to separate from the second stage section, things didn’t go according to plan, and the spacecraft appeared to be in a spin-down mode heading back to Earth. The starship has a self-destruct capability that reduces the risk of an uncontrolled entry into Earth. However, says Elon Musk Automatic destruction command It did not work immediately in this mission.
Why was the Starship orbital test unsuccessful?
The CEO of SpaceX claimed in a Twitter space that the command to destroy the starship with 40 seconds delay acted and caused the explosion of this spacecraft. He also talked about the problems of this flight to non-participation 3 Raptor engines He noted that the giant rocket’s 33 engines had apparently shut down before the starship separated from the platform. This event causes Angular In the launch of this spaceship, something happened that should not have happened.
Finally, less than 30 seconds after launch, one of Raptor 2’s remaining engines also failed a defect It crashed, damaging other nearby engines. About a minute and a half after the launch, the engines function Control the direction of movement They lost the starship and that’s why we saw the spacecraft spinning.
At the time of separation from the earth, unplanned events happened. For example, due to the power of the engines and the destruction of the concrete of the launch pad, a huge cloud of dust and particles was created. The failure of the launch pad concretes also causes damage to Equipment around the platform became. Now a new satellite image of the launch site has been released showing the damage (pictured above).
According to Elon Musk, SpaceX will likely test the orbital launch of Starship again in about 6 to 8 weeks.
