In just two years’ time, the SpaceX Starship is due to land people on the surface of the moon – and if you believe Elon Musk, embark on a mission to Mars.
So it’s a significant setback for the rocket to explode so spectacularly – and publicly – for the second time in as many months.
Just nine-and-a-half minutes into test flight eight, contact was lost with the upper stage. A SpaceX livestream showed the engines cutting out and the rocket veering out of control.
Fiery debris was then seen streaking across the sky.
“Success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability,” the company said.
Learning through failure is what drives SpaceX and its founder Elon Musk.
The company had already made design changes in response to the failure of test flight seven in January.
Its investigation concluded vibrations had stressed hardware in the propulsion system, which leaked and exploded.
The Federal Aviation Administration was satisfied that the engineering upgrades met its safety requirements.
But once again there has been a failure and the company has started a second investigation using video from inside the rocket and system data leading up to the explosion.
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Starship is on an incredibly tight testing schedule.
Flights had been due to ramp up this year, with 25 planned – all increasingly ambitious.
There’s a lot to be done before humans can clamber aboard.
For such a large rocket to reach the moon it will need to be refueled before it leaves the Earth’s orbit.
So upwards of half a dozen ‘tanker’ versions of Starship will need to be launched, and the propellant then pumped into the rocket heading to the moon.
There it will orbit, waiting for astronauts to arrive on NASA’s own Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and then take them down to the lunar surface.
But a safe landing on the rugged terrain of the moon’s south pole is far from guaranteed, as Thursday’s touchdown by Intuitive Machines’ Athena spacecraft shows. It appears to have fallen over.
NASA and SpaceX are having to push hard to beat China back to the moon in a quest for water and minerals.
Read more:
The space race for the moon’s water
Second ever private moon landing touches down
And Elon Musk has talked about sending the first uncrewed Starships to Mars in 2027 and astronauts soon after.
But there is a risk. The Space Shuttle was one of the most complex machines ever built. One blew up on launch, another on its return to Earth. Both were the result of hardware failures.
NASA is more risk-averse these days. That’s why the “stranded” astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were kept on the International Space Station rather than riding home on the hobbled Boeing spacecraft.
It remains to be seen whether the space agency comes under increasing pressure from Donald Trump’s administration to take more risks to win the space race.
But it certainly won’t want to put its astronauts on a rocket that just isn’t ready.
