The new Spacex ship vehicle has just come out with smoke.
The company was testing a superior scenario of the spacecraft in its Starbase site in southern Texas on Wednesday night (June 18), to prepare for the next tenth megarockt flight test.
But something went very bad, as the video captured by Nasaspaceflight.com shows: the vehicle exploded, sending a ball of massive fire High the Dark Texas Skies.
Spacex recognized the incident in an early X position in Thorsday Morning (June 19), noting that it occurred around 11 pm local time (EDT of midnight and 0400 GMT on June 19).
“A clear security area was maintained around the site through the operation and all the staff is safe and accounted for,” Spacex added in the position. “Our Starbase team is actively working to ensure the test site and the immediate surrounding area together with local officials. There are no dangers for residents in the surrounding communities, and we ask that people do not try to approve
Spacex is developing Starship, the greatest and most powerful rocket ever built, to help humanity colonize Mars, among other ambitious exploration tasks.
The vehicle consists of two elements, both or that are designed to be complete and quickly reusable, a reinforcement of the first stage called Super Heavy and an upper 171 feet (52 meter) spacecraft known as Starship, or simply ship.
It was the ship that exploded on Wednesday night, in a test post at the Massey Starbase site (not in the orbital launch support, from which spacecraft take off). According to Nasaspaceflight, which closely monitors the activity of the spacecraft in Starbase, the anomaly occurred just before the ship is established to perform a static fire test.
Static fires are common common tests, in which the motors of a rocket are briefly lit while the vehicle remains anchored to the ground. Spacex had already made a static fire with this ship, thought that the trial involved only one of its Raptor engines; This test can have the leg destined to light the six.
Spacex has also made the super heavy reinforcement of flight 10 of flight 10, successively convincing the 33 of its raptors.
The explosion on Wednesday night continued a series of setbacks for the upper stages of Starship. Ship has separated in the last three spacecraft tests, which were launched in January, March and May of this year.
On flight 7 and flight 8, the “rapid unchanged disassembly” occurred less than 10 minutes after takeoff. The ship flew significantly more on flight 9; Spacex lost contact with the vehicle about 46 minutes after takeoff, and its pieces probably rest on the seabed of the Indian Ocean.
Super Heavy has had a better performance. On flight 7 and flight 8, for example, the reinforcement returned to Starbase after the launch for a dramatic capture of the arms of “stick” of the launch tower. Flight 7 Super Heavy flew again on flight 9, achieving an important reuse milestone for the ship’s ship program.
Spacex is still investigating what happened on flight 9, an investigation supervised by the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States. Therefore, there was still no official launch date of Target for Starship Flight 10, and, if I had one leg, now it would have to be reviewed after the events on Wednesday night.
