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SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft exploded minutes after liftoff in an uncrewed test flight from South Texas on Thursday, cutting short a key step in Elon Musk’s development of a rocket vessel to eventually take humans to the moon and Mars.

The flight test was the first for Starship mounted atop the company’s new Super Heavy rocket, and the first launch ever for that lower-stage booster, which SpaceX has touted as the most powerful launch vehicle on Earth.

Even though the two-stage rocket ship made it less than halfway to the edge of space, climbing to just under 25 miles (40 km), the flight achieved a primary objective of getting the new vehicle off the ground at liftoff despite some of its engines failing.

While SpaceX officials were heartened by the outcome, the mission fell short of reaching several objectives.

The plan was for Starship to soar into space at least 90 some miles (150 km) above Earth before it would re-enter the atmosphere and plunge into the Pacific near Hawaii.

But SpaceX said in a statement afterward that the spacecraft “experienced multiple engines out” during its ascent, then “lost altitude and began to tumble,” before the “flight termination system was commanded on both the booster and the ship.”

Musk, SpaceX’s founder, chief executive and chief engineer, had appeared eager to temper expectations in remarks made Sunday that downplayed the odds of a successful first flight. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told a conference in February that the “the real goal is to not blow up the launch pad.”

By that measure, the debut flight of Starship with its booster rocket represented a milestone in SpaceX’s ambition of sending astronauts back to the moon and ultimately to Mars, as a major partner in Artemis, NASA’s newly inaugurated human spaceflight program.

NASA chief Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on Twitter, saying, “every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward.”

Launch, then fiery ‘disassembly’

The two-stage rocket ship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 meters), blasted off from the company’s Starbase spaceport on the southern tip of Texas along the Gulf Coast east of Brownsville. SpaceX hoped, at best, to pull off a 90-minute debut flight into space but just shy of Earth orbit.

A live SpaceX webcast showed the rocket ship rising from the launch tower into the morning sky as the Super Heavy’s Raptor engines roared to life in a ball of flame and billowing clouds of exhaust and water vapor.

But less than four minutes into the flight, the upper-stage Starship failed to separate as designed from the lower-stage Super Heavy, and the combined vehicle was seen tumbling end over end before blowing apart.

The pad and surrounding area were cordoned off well in advance of the test, SpaceX said. Any debris from the explosion should have landed over the water in areas placed off-limits by the U.S. Coast Guard.

The spacecraft reached a peak altitude of about 24 miles (39 km) before its fiery disintegration, SpaceX said. The company also noted that the rocket reached the critical launch point of maximum aerodynamic pressure before appearing to lose control.

SpaceX officials on the webcast hailed the liftoff as a welcome accomplishment.

A throng of SpaceX workers shown during the webcast watching a livestream together at the company’s headquarters near Los Angeles cheered wildly as the rocket cleared the launch tower – and again when it blew up.

‘Learned a lot’

Musk, shown seated in the Starbase mission control room in Boca Chica, Texas, wearing a headset, said on Twitter afterwards that the next Starship test launch would be in a few months.

“Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch,” he tweeted. Musk, who purchased Twitter last year for $44 billion, is also CEO of electric carmaker Tesla Inc.

SpaceX principal integration engineer John Insprucker, one of the webcast commentators, said the experience would provide a wealth of data to inform further flight tests.

The road to Thursday’s accident has not been without previous tests and setbacks.

A stationary test firing of the Super Heavy while bolted to a platform managed to ignite just 31 Raptor engines in February, and an earlier static firing test in July 2022 ended with the vehicle’s engine section exploding.

Before that, SpaceX had test-launched prototypes of Starship’s top half in five short flights to an altitude of 6 miles (9.7 km), seeking to perfect its return landing capability. All but one crashed in flames.

The spectacular nature of Thursday’s loss of the first fully integrated Starship-and-booster vehicle during its introductory launch further highlighted challenges SpaceX faces moving beyond its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, the centerpiece of the company’s satellite launch business.

Still even a textbook test flight would have by design ended with crash landings of both portions of the spacecraft at sea.

The Super Heavy and Starship were each designed as reusable components, capable of flying back to Earth for soft landings in a maneuver that has become routine in dozens of missions for SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.

For Thursday’s launch, however, the flight plan called for the lower stage to fall into the Gulf of Mexico after separating from the upper stage, which would have come down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii after achieving nearly one full Earth orbit.

© Thomson Reuters 2023


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Astronomers Capture First-Ever Image of a Dead Star That Exploded Twice in Rare Supernova Event

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Astronomers Capture First-Ever Image of a Dead Star That Exploded Twice in Rare Supernova Event

For the first time, a team of astronomers has captured a clear image of a white dwarf star that exploded not just once, but twice, as a Type Ia supernova — a “double-detonation” that scientists hadn’t thought possible until now. The extraordinary observation could revise our long-held notions of how stars die, suggesting that some stars can explode as supernovas without ever crossing the Chandrasekhar limit, the minimum mass normally thought necessary for such an explosion. The astronomers employed the Very Large Telescope’s MUSE instrument to zoom in on the four-century-old supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5, which sits 60,000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado, revealing evidence of two separate blasting catastrophes in its construction.

First Visual Proof Shows White Dwarfs Can Explode Twice Without Reaching Chandrasekhar Limit

As the researchers report on July 2 in Nature Astronomy, the team found a distinctive “fingerprint” in the debris of SNR 0509-67.5 in the Large Magellanic Cloud that the models predicted. White dwarfs—which are the dead stage of sun-like stars—usually blow up into Type Ia supernovas after they hit the Chandrasekhar limit by stealing matter from a neighbouring star.

However, this finding shows that the detonation can be launched at an earlier time. The explosion is likely to have a two-step origin, the team argues, with the initial blast being generated when an unstable layer of helium that the star had acquired exploded on its surface; the resulting shock wave then drove a second and main detonation.

“This physical proof of a double-detonation not only helps solve a long-standing mystery of what causes these explosions, but it represents the most visually compelling evidence for this origin.” Priyam Das, University of New South Wales, team leader and author.

Something is happening to Type Ia supernovas, the “standard candles” used to measure cosmic distances, because their brightness doesn’t fluctuate. But they have long mystified scientists with how they explode. Until this discovery, an explosion white dwarf that didn’t surpass the Chandrasekhar limit was only considered in theory.

This fresh visual evidence for the double detonation model further informs our knowledge of stellar evolution and also informs how we should interpret light from distant supernovas. More than its scientific implications, its discovery adds a colourful new page to the story of dying stars — stars that, as it now appears, will not go gently into that night but will light up the sky twice over in fantastic fireworks before vanishing from the cosmos.

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Climate Satellite MethaneSAT Fails After Just One Year in Orbit

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Climate Satellite MethaneSAT Fails After Just One Year in Orbit

One of the world’s most advanced satellites for detecting methane and other gases that contribute to the warming of the planet has gone dark and stopped communicating with ground-based controllers just over a year after being launched into orbit. Created by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the satellite — estimated to cost as much as $88 million — hitched a ride into space on a SpaceX rocket in March 2024. It was charged with monitoring methane leaks from oil and gas operations, and then making the data available to policymakers and scientists through open access. But on June 20, contact with the satellite was lost, and attempts to recover it have failed. EDF officially reported on July 1 that MethaneSAT has lost power and appears unlikely to recover.

MethaneSAT Failure Marks Setback for Climate Transparency Despite Data Gains and Global Support

As per a statement released by EDF, MethaneSAT’s failure came despite multiple recovery attempts. The satellite was constructed to lift the veil off methane’s invisible, weighty impact on global warming. It is nowhere near as common as carbon dioxide, but over a timescale of, say, a century, it is 20 to 30 times more efficient at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. That makes its emissions a prime target in the effort to minimize the risks of global warming. MethaneSAT was developed to independently corroborate industrial methane reports, especially those from fossil fuel extraction. The loss of the satellite is a remarkable setback for transparency in climate science and monitoring of emissions worldwide.

Yet mission operators are hopeful that data already collected will have far-reaching effects. EDF emphasized that insights from MethaneSAT’s year in orbit will continue to be processed and made public in the coming months. The mission included backing from 10 partners such as Harvard University, the New Zealand Space Agency, BAE Systems, Google, and the Bezos Earth Fund.

Officials called MethaneSAT a bold and needed move to hold our climate accountable. Although the mission was cut short, it signaled one of the largest joint efforts between science, advocacy, and technology to battle climate change. “To succeed in meeting the climate challenge, we need bold action and fearless innovation,” EDF mentioned, describing the satellite as “at the vanguard of science.”
MethaneSAT’s brief history highlights the difficulty — and importance — of deploying space-based instruments to try and combat climate change. As other missions get ready to blaze the same trail, the data and experience this little spacecraft provided will influence the future of Earth observation.

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New Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Speeds Through Solar System

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New Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Speeds Through Solar System

A newly confirmed interstellar comet is making a rare passage through our solar system — and skywatchers can catch it live online tonight. The object, now called 3I/ATLAS, is just the third interstellar visitor ever detected after the well-known ‘Oumuamua (2017) and 2I/Borisov (2019). The comet was so fresh when first detected on July 1 by the ATLAS telescope in Chile that it hadn’t even been given a name yet; the Minor Planet Center has it listed as “3I,” the “I” standing for interstellar. Tonight’s webcast will kick off at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) from the Virtual Telescope Project’s virtual observing facilities in Italy.

Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Speeds Toward Sun at 68 km/s, Offers Rare Study Opportunity

As per a report by Space.com, 3I/ATLAS was detected as a faint object displaying subtle cometary features, including a marginal coma and a short tail. Currently located 4.5 astronomical units (AU) from the sun — about 670 million kilometers (416 million miles) — the comet is faint at magnitude 18.8, making it invisible to amateur telescopes. The interstellar object is traveling at an astonishing pace of 68 kilometers per second (152,000 mph) relative to the sun, but NASA officials say it poses no danger to Earth.

It was imaged by the Virtual Telescope Project on July 2, showing the comet as a point of light within the trailing background stars — a sure indication that it is indeed moving through space. 3I/ATLAS should brighten a little as it approaches the sun, particularly when it gets closest, or its perihelion, on Oct. 30, when it swings within 1.4 astronomical units of the sun or Mars’ orbit.

The close pass by this interstellar visitor is a rare chance for astronomers to study the materials and dynamics outside our solar system. 3I/ATLAS, which is racing along at a frenetic pace on an elliptical orbit, may also support research into how these objects change as they sit in different stellar environments.

After disappearing behind the sun in late fall, 3I/ATLAS is projected to return to observational reach in early December. Researchers anticipate further analysis then, expanding our understanding of these rare visitors that traverse the galaxy — and occasionally, pass through our celestial neighborhood.

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The Hunt: Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Now Available For Streaming on SonyLIV

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