USA.- SpaceX finally launched its eighth test flight of Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket, on Thursday, but lost contact with the ship shortly after, Elon Musk's company confirmed shortly after.
“SpaceX confirms that the Starship upper stage for Flight 8 was lost after losing engines and tidal control approximately 20 seconds before completing its ascent,” it said on its X account, adding that it will soon begin an investigation into what happened, which seems reminiscent of a similar failure that doomed SpaceX’s Flight 7 spacecraft in January.
He explained that during Starship's ascent, the vehicle suffered "a rapid and unplanned disassembly and contact was lost. Our team immediately began coordinating with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses."
The incident occurred shortly after the two parts of the spacecraft separated and the Super Heavy, which propels it, successfully returned to its base in Texas, for the third time in these tests, amid applause from the public who came to witness the event.
Thursday's incident comes after the test - initially scheduled for February 28 - was cancelled three times, one of them last Monday for technical reasons, and after a ship exploded last January and its fragments scattered across the Caribbean, after which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched an investigation.
However, SpaceX had the FAA's approval to carry out this new test, amid the investigation.
“We saw a number of the engines start to stall. Once you lose enough of the core engines, you lose attitude control. And then we saw the ship start to spin, and at that point, we lost contact with the ship,” said Dan Huot of SpaceX Communications, who was broadcasting with engineer Kathy Tice.
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“Obviously there’s a lot to look at, a lot to investigate and we’re going to do that straight away,” Huot said during live comments at the launch. “We have a lot more to learn about this vehicle,” he said.
The ship took off at 18:30 local time (23:30 GMT) powered by the Super Heavy from the SpaceX base in Boca Chica, in southern Texas, on the border with Mexico.
