SpaceX’s Starship rocket is destroyed during re-entry to Earth

Boca Chica. A SpaceX Starship rocket, designed to eventually send astronauts to the Moon, nearly completed a full test flight on its third attempt Thursday, reaching further via a low-orbit cruise mode, but was destroyed. upon re-entry into the atmosphere, the company said.

During a live webcast of the flight, SpaceX commentators said mission control lost communications with the spacecraft during its re-entry into the atmosphere. The vehicle was approaching a planned landing in the Indian Ocean about an hour after launch.

A few minutes later, SpaceX confirmed that the spacecraft had been lost, presumably burning up and disintegrating during reentry or crashing into the sea.

Still, the completion of most of the Starship’s test flight trajectory marked a major milestone in the development of a spacecraft crucial to Elon Musk’s satellite launch business and NASA’s lunar program.

NASA chief Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on what he called “a successful test flight” in a statement posted on the X social network.

The two-stage spacecraft, consisting of the Starship cruiser mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, lifted off from the Elon Musk-owned company’s Starbase launch site near Boca Chica Village on the southern Texas Gulf Coast.

During its flight, Starship reached maximum altitudes of 234 kilometers, the company said.

SpaceX engineers hoped to improve on Starship’s two previous performances, which ended in explosions minutes after launch.

However, the company had recognized in advance a high probability that its most recent flight would end in the same way with the destruction of the ship before the planned mission profile was completed.

SpaceX’s engineering culture, considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industry’s more established players, is based on a testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure and then fine-tune improvement through frequent repetitions.

Despite Thursday’s test result, all indications are that Starship is still a considerable distance away from being fully operational.