The Jewish Prophesy of Alexander the Great
Categories:
The US has grounded SpaceX’s Starship rocket while an investigation is carried out into why one exploded during its latest test flight on Thursday, BBC reported.
The rocket’s upper stage broke up and disintegrated over the Caribbean after launching from Texas, forcing dozens of airline flights to alter course to avoid falling debris.
The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded flights of the spacecraft pending an investigation into the mishap. The FAA and Turks and Caicos Islands officials also work to confirm property damage, after the spacecraft falling debris. No injuries were reported.
The FAA told Elon Musk’s company to carry out a SpaceX Starship “mishap” investigation before deciding if Starship can return to flight.
The regulator confirmed it had activated a “debris response area” to briefly slow aircraft outside the area where debris was falling, or stop aircraft from leaving their departure locations.
Several aircraft asked to divert due to low fuel levels while being held outside the affected area.
The Starship system lifted off at 17:38 EST (22:38 GMT) from the Boka Chica airbase in South Texas and the upper stage separated from its Super Heavy booster nearly four minutes into flight as planned.
But then SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot reported on a live stream that mission teams had lost contact with the ship, according to BBC.
The Super Heavy booster managed to return to its launchpad roughly seven minutes after lift-off as planned, prompting an eruption of applause from ground control teams.
SpaceX later confirmed the upper stage had undergone “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.
In a post on his social media platform X, Elon Musk said “preliminary indications” were that the problem was linked to an “oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall”.
The billionaire added that “nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month”.
SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket – collectively referred to as Starship – is 123m (403ft) tall and is intended to be fully reusable, the company says.
A video posted on social media showed debris from the 122-meter Starship rocket hurtling through the sky like lightning.
Despite the rocket explosion, the SpaceX owner seemed to see the bright side of the mishap, “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!” he wrote.
NASA hopes to use a modified version of the rocket as a human lunar lander for its Artemis missions to return to the Moon, BBC says.
The tech billionaire aims at Starship to make long-haul trips to Mars and back – about a nine-month trip each way.
