SpaceX Having Trouble Getting Starship Launched Again After Explosion
SpaceX was forced to call off the eighth flight test of its mammoth Starship spacecraft just minutes before the rocket was supposed to launch from the company's facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
On Monday evening, several unspecified issues related to the 403-foot rocket's Super Heavy booster were flagged by engineers, according to SpaceFlightNow, less than a half hour before its scheduled 5:45 launch time. After placing a temporary hold, SpaceX decided to scrub the launch entirely.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk exhorted caution, but was light on details about what went wrong.
"Too many question marks about this flight and then we were 20 bar low on ground spin start pressure," Musk said. "Best to destack, inspect both stages and try again in a day or two."
On Wednesday morning, SpaceX said it aims to attempt another launch as soon as Thursday. The day before, it briefly claimed that Wednesday would be the new launch date, though these quickly shifting timelines aren't uncommon in the world of spaceflight.
The eighth flight test, whenever it happens, will be the first since Starship's upper stage spectacularly exploded midair over the Caribbean in January. The incident sent streaks of fiery debris careening through the sky, forcing air traffic controllers to divert flights in the area. Some debris even landed on nearby islands, angering residents.
A subsequent investigation determined that violent oscillations caused a propellant leak in the Starship's "attic" — or the gap between the rocket's rear heat shield and its liquid oxygen tank. The resulting buildup sparked a flurry of fires that took out almost all the rocket's engines, triggering the ship's onboard self-destruct system minutes later.
It wasn't entirely disastrous. Following a smooth separation from the ill-fated upper stage, the Starship's Super Heavy booster executed a boostback burn, a maneuver in which the rocket reverses course after separating. During the maneuver, all but one of its 13 engines successfully reignited, and shortly afterwards, the booster guided itself back towards its launch pad, where it was caught midair by the tower's "chopstick" arms.
For the upcoming flight test, SpaceX is more or less re-attempting the last one, with several tweaks. One major change is adding more ventilation to the Starship's attic to prevent another fire. There have also been modifications to the Starship's fuel line and adjustments to the engine's thrust levels and the temperatures of the propellant.
Along with another trial of relighting its engines in orbit, SpaceX will test a system to deploy four expendable dummy Starlink satellites from the vehicle's upper stage at a suborbital altitude — if it survives long enough, that is.
More on SpaceX: It Looks an Awful Lot Like Elon Musk Is Awarding a Huge Government Contract to Himself
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