Just minutes after launching from South Padre Island in Texas, SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, April 20, 2023.
The official SpaceX Twitter account stated, “As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation.”
SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, was trying to send Starship on a round-the-world trip. The rocket carried no payload — astronauts or satellites.
The launch was initially scheduled for April 17, but was postponed because of a frozen booster valve.
Starship comes in at 394 feet with nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, and surpasses NASA’s other moon rockets — past, present and future.
“Congrats to SpaceX on Starship’s first integrated flight test,” said Bill Nelson, NASA administrator. “Every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward.
“Looking forward to all that SpaceX learns, to the next flight test — and beyond,” Nelson continued.
Starship is a stainless steel, fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.
To date, the SpaceX team has completed multiple sub-orbital flight tests of Starship’s upper stage from Starbase, successfully demonstrating an unprecedented approach to controlled flight. These flight tests helped validate the vehicle’s design, proving Starship can fly through the subsonic phase of entry before re-lighting its engines and flipping itself to a vertical configuration for landing.
In addition to the testing of Starship’s upper stage, the team has conducted numerous tests of the Super Heavy rocket, which include the increasingly complex static fires that led to a full-duration 31 Raptor engine test — the largest number of simultaneous rocket engine ignitions in history. The team has also constructed the world’s tallest rocket launch and catch tower. At 146 meters, or nearly 500 feet tall, the launch and catch tower is designed to support vehicle integration, launch, and catch of the Super Heavy rocket booster. For the first flight test, the team will not attempt a vertical landing of Starship or a catch of the Super Heavy booster.