The objective of the seventh check flight was to check a number of upgrades SpaceX made to its heavy-lift rocket system. After a profitable launch and finishing a full period burn, the Tremendous Heavy booster separated from Starship and triggered a boostback burn designed to return it to the launch web site. Following a touchdown burn, the Tremendous Heavy booster was efficiently caught mid-air by the launch tower at Starbase for the second time.
The mission didn’t go fairly as nicely for Starship. Roughly two minutes after the spacecraft ignited its second stage Raptor engines following separation, a flash was noticed within the aft part of Starship referred to as the attic, adopted by sensors detecting a stress rise from a leak. Two minutes after that, a second flash was noticed, adopted by sustained fires within the attic part that ultimately “brought about all however one in every of Starship’s engines to execute managed shut down sequences and in the end led to a lack of communication with the ship.”
Publish-flight evaluation indicated that Starship’s Autonomous Flight Security System triggered a self-destruct roughly three minutes after the bottom crew misplaced contact with the spacecraft. In response to SpaceX, essentially the most possible reason for the incident was vibrations that have been a lot stronger in the course of the flight than had been skilled throughout testing. That resulted in elevated stress on the propulsion system’s {hardware} and, ultimately, a propellant leak that “exceeded the venting functionality of the ship’s attic space and resulted in sustained fires.”
The explosion created falling particles that seemed extra like a meteor bathe over the islands of Turks and Caicos to a number of vacationers who shared videos of the aftermath on social media. Though SpaceX says all of the “particles got here down throughout the pre-planned Particles Response Space,” the Federal Aviation Administration briefly slowed and diverted a number of flights within the space on January sixteenth on account of the incident.
As a part of the investigation into the explosion involving SpaceX, the FAA, NASA, the Nationwide Transportation Security Board, and the U.S. Area Drive, the corporate carried out a 60-second static check fireplace with the Starship that will likely be used on an upcoming eighth flight. Following the outcomes of that check, SpaceX has made {hardware} adjustments to gas feedlines in addition to changes to propellant temperatures and working thrust targets.
The corporate has additionally added further vents and a “new purge system using gaseous nitrogen” to the attic part of Starship designed to make that space extra sturdy to propellant leakage.
SpaceX at the moment plans to launch an eighth check flight of Starship on February twenty eighth, 2025, however continues to be “working with the FAA to both shut the mishap investigation or obtain a flight security willpower, together with engaged on a license authorization to allow its subsequent flight of Starship.”