Starship takeoff | An explosion with the air of success

The second launch of SpaceX’s giant rocket intended for flights to the Moon and Mars marks progress

(South Padre Island, Texas) SpaceX, Elon Musk’s spaceflight company, launched its super-heavy launcher on Saturday Starship from the coast of South Texas, a gigantic rocket that could change the course of the future of space transportation and help NASA return astronauts to the Moon.

The flight of Starship, a powerful launch vehicle designed to carry NASA astronauts to the Moon, was not a complete success. SpaceX did not achieve the ultimate goal of the test launch, namely a partial circumnavigation ending with a splashdown in the Pacific.

But this test flight, the launcher’s second, showed that the company had resolved the main problems that emerged during the previous test operation in April. The 33 engines of the lower stage of the launcher all ignited and the rocket managed to separate, that is to say, to detach itself from the booster booster and to ignite the six engines of the upper stage to push the vehicle into space.

“Simply beautiful,” said John Insprucker, SpaceX engineer and live launch commentator, during the SpaceX webcast.

The first launch of Starship had seriously damaged the launch site: several engines of the booster booster had failed, fires had caused the launcher to deviate from its trajectory and the end-of-flight system had taken too long to detonate.

Under SpaceX’s “fail fast, learn faster” approach to rocket design, avoiding repeating past failures is a major step forward.

However, the second flight revealed new challenges that Musk’s engineers will face.

Shortly after the stage separated, the booster exploded – an “unplanned rapid breakup,” in rocket engineer jargon. The spaceship Starship the upper stage continued to move toward orbit for several minutes, reaching an altitude of more than 1,500 meters, but SpaceX lost contact with it after the end-of-flight system exploded.

In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration said no injuries or property damage had been reported. It will investigate the accident, as it does every time a problem arises with a commercial rocket.

The outcome of the test trip marks the most recent snapshot in the career of Elon Musk, the serial entrepreneur who transformed electronic payments with PayPal and electric cars with Tesla. As SpaceX prepared for Friday’s flight, Disney and Apple halted ad spending with another of its companies, social network X, after Mr. Musk approved an anti-Semitic post on Wednesday.

“Further than ever”

Many outside observers are optimistic that SpaceX will be able to fully operate Starship.

“They have solved the problems identified in their first flight and have gone further than ever with this type of vehicle,” noted Phil Larson, a White House space adviser during the administration of President Barack Obama, who has since joined SpaceX’s communications efforts.

Daniel L. Dumbacher, executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, agrees. “This is a large-scale launch system,” he said. It will take some work to get it where it needs to go. I have no doubt that the SpaceX team will be able to find a way to make the launcher work. »

On Saturday, a few hours before sunrise, liquid oxygen and methane began flowing into the spacecraft. There was a little fog on the ground, but the sky was clear, apart from a few cirrus clouds.

The countdown went smoothly and stopped at a scheduled stopping point with 40 seconds left on the clock. The countdown was up, the final seconds ticked off, and shortly after 7 a.m. (local time), the 120-meter-tall rocket slowly rose into the sky. A new water deluge system appears to have protected the launch pad, avoiding the cloud of dust and debris that had risen in April.

Seconds later, the impactful roar shook spectators on South Padre Island, about 5 miles north of the launch site.

Then, 2 minutes and 48 seconds after takeoff, a flash of lightning appeared when Starship successfully completed what was to be the most delicate stage of the flight: the ignition of the six engines of the upper stage before the booster booster detached. Loud applause rang out on SpaceX’s webcast from the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

Thirty seconds later, the explosion of the booster rocket, which was to crash into the Gulf of Mexico and sink, caused a larger flash. The upper floor continued on its way, unharmed. But minutes later, the webcast fell into uncomfortable silence when contact was lost with the pitcher Starship.

Towards the first woman on the Moon

Thousands of people who rose early to watch the launch on South Padre Island said they enjoyed the spectacle. As early as 4:30 a.m., a long line of cars waited in the dark to enter Isla Blanca Park, on the southern end of South Padre Island. Others left their hotels on foot to avoid traffic. Boats full of observers floated just to the south, outside the exclusion zone to the east.

The launch was experienced not only by those watching along the coast, but also by those further afield.

Emma Guevara, a resident of Brownsville, the South Texas city west of the SpaceX launch site, said her house shook.

“It was much earlier than we expected, and it woke everyone up,” said M^me Guevara, who is an organizer with the Sierra Club, an environmental NGO, and who has protested operations at the company’s base.

Top NASA officials congratulated SpaceX.

“Each test represents one step closer to sending the first woman to the Moon with the #Artemis III human landing system Starship “, wrote Jim Free, NASA associate administrator for exploration systems development, on X. “We look forward to seeing what we can learn from this test that brings us closer to the next step. »

The pace at which SpaceX will resolve issues related to Starship could determine when NASA astronauts return to the Moon.

The space agency hired SpaceX to adapt Starship and make it a lunar lander to transport two astronauts to the south polar regions of the Moon. Even before the last test flight of Starshipthe first landing, planned for late 2025, had already been considered likely to be delayed until 2026. SpaceX is also under contract to provide a lander Starship for the second crewed moon landing, planned for 2028.

For the moon landing, SpaceX would not need a single launcher Starshipbut by almost 20, because a Starship heading towards the Moon should fill its propellant tanks before leaving Earth’s orbit.