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Blazing remnants of the Starship were photographed reentering the atmosphere over the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean.
SpaceX is giving its “damn the torpedoes” development philosophy a workout as it plans to return the Starship to flight within weeks after suffering a spectacular inflight breakup during the heavy-lift system’s seventh flight test.
The rocket company’s effort to demonstrate payload deployment, land its upper stage and potentially achieve spaceship-to-spaceship fuel transfer this year had an inauspicious start when the Starship system suffered a setback during the Jan. 16 flight. Minutes after launch, the Block 2 upper stage broke up when a fire developed in the aft section.
- Starship design changes loom after upper-stage loss
- Musk calls the mishap “barely a bump in the road”
The mishap caused several commercial airline flights over the northern Caribbean to enter holding patterns briefly or to divert as a precaution against possible impact with falling debris. The breakup also occurred before SpaceX was able to validate key goals of the test flight, including a first attempt at deploying a payload.
“Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on social media shortly after the test. “Nothing so far suggests pushing the next launch past next month.”
Musk noted that “apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area.”
Revised elements of the Block 2 upper stage include a new multifeedline fuel system for the vehicle’s Raptor vacuum engines and several redesigned vents.
The Starship powered off the launchpad at Boca Chica Beach, Texas, at 4:37 p.m. CST. The 407-ft.-tall rocket passed through maximum dynamic pressure—or Max Q—as it passed through 14-km (9-mi.) altitude just over 1 min. into the flight. Some 90 sec. later, 30 of the first stage’s 33 Raptor engines were shut off prior to hot-staging, when the Starship’s six Raptors ignited to push the upper stage clear.
Telemetry data indicate problems with the system began around 7 min. 43 sec. after launch, when one of the three center-mounted Raptors appeared to shut down prematurely. A second inner Raptor cut off at around 8 min. 4 sec., followed 1 sec. later by the first of the three vacuum Raptors. A second vacuum Raptor shut down at 8 min. 17 sec., at which point telemetry ceased with the vehicle indicating a speed of 21,317 kph (13,246 mph) and an altitude of 146 km.
The 170-ft.-tall upper stage, which was intended to make a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean, broke apart before it could deploy 10 Starlink internet satellite mass simulators. They were designed to pave the way for deployments of the more capable Starlink V3 version, which would add around 60 Tbps of bandwidth.
Another set of key tests planned for the mission included evaluations of the Block 2’s revised nose flaps, upgraded avionics and thermal protection system (TPS). These were scheduled to begin 47 min. into the flight, when the vehicle was to start its fiery reentry maneuver. The movable flaps—which control the vehicle during atmospheric descent—were smaller on the lost Block 2 vehicle than on the Block 1 versions. They were repositioned farther toward the nose and leeward side of the Starship to provide more thermal protection for the dynamic seals.
The flight was also to include an inflight relight of one of the three vacuum Raptor engines, repeating an event first accomplished on Flight 6. Demonstrations of in-space Raptor relights are vital to the longer-term success of the overall Starship program. Without reliable restarting, deorbiting, maneuvers and precise landings will not be possible.
For Flight 7, the Starship’s heat shield featured a new-generation TPS, with a backup layer beneath it in case of failure, and an experimental heat-shield section incorporating several panels made of different metallic materials, including one with active cooling. The company removed multiple tiles to stress-test potentially vulnerable areas across the vehicle as well.
Musk said some new features of the Starship system’s upper stage were validated despite the loss. “New ship forward flaps, higher-thrust engines and tile adherence on ascent were tested,” he said, adding that “improved heat-shield performance was the only major thing that wasn’t tested,” along with the payload dispenser. He graded the upper-stage test as a 25% success.
“This is barely a bump in the road,” Musk said.
Other elements of the test went more smoothly. For the second time, SpaceX caught a super-heavy booster with the “chopsticks” launch tower arms. Initially, only 12 of 13 Raptor engines relit for the boostback burn to return to the launch site following stage separation.
SpaceX was later able to relight all 13 engines to perform the landing burn, enabling catch of the booster. Slowed by a final landing burn with three engines at 6 min. 35 sec. into the flight, the Super Heavy stage—which incorporated an engine flown on the fifth Starship test mission—was caught 20 sec. later by the recently beefed-up launch tower robotic arm mechanism.
The recovery also included evaluation of several radar sensors that have been added to the chopsticks to improve distance-measuring guidance accuracy during the approach maneuver and final catch sequence.
SpaceX now has removed the heavy booster from the pad to start refurbishing the hardware.
The FAA is requiring the space launch company to conduct a mishap investigation into the loss of the vehicle and says it “is working with SpaceX and appropriate authorities to confirm reports of public property damage on Turks and Caicos.” The agency added that it had activated a “Debris Response Area” and taken action to keep aircraft away from Starship debris.
The bulk of flights affected were in transit to the U.S. from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and St. Lucia, but several others that were briefly crossing the airspace beneath the path of the stricken spacecraft were affected, too.
Flights affected included two by Delta Air Lines—one from St. Lucia to Atlanta and another from San Juan to Minneapolis. A Frontier Airlines flight from San Juan to Orlando, Florida, and a JetBlue Airways flight from St. Lucia to New York also entered holding patterns over the Dominican Republic coast.
Although the FAA had issued a standard Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) warning of potential debris from the SpaceX test flight, that was for an area of the Gulf of Mexico adjacent to the space company’s launch facility at Boca Chica Beach. However, the NOTAM did include a broader warning area for the airspace beneath the extended flight path of the vehicle over the Caribbean, where the breakup occurred.
SpaceX has stressed a development approach to press ahead with activities even while trying to draw lessons from setbacks, rather than pausing until investigations are complete. After the latest setback, the company said “the ship and booster for Starship’s eighth flight test are built and going through prelaunch testing and preparing to fly as we continue a rapid iterative development process to build a fully and rapidly reusable space transportation system.”
Musk has long championed Starship as the way to get to Mars. President Donald Trump, during his second inaugural address on Jan. 20, called for the U.S. to put astronauts on the planet but did not provide a timeline.
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