With the “unscheduled rapid disassembly” of the seventh flight of the Starchip we learn.

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The countdown culminates in a colossal roar when the 33 raptor engines of the imposing SuperHeavy went into action, it happened once again lifting the StarShip into the skies over Texas, everything seemed perfect in the immensity of the sky and for a moment you feel in the future and in fact we are.

This latest test flight was full of new milestones, stage separation in full ignition, return of the booster to the tower, Autonomous capture systems, even modifications to the second stage that promised a significant advance in SpaceX's trajectory towards orbital flights and maybe even Mars.

The first minutes unfolded like a perfectly rehearsed technical valet, with the StarShip ascending steadily and separating from the SuperHeavy at the exact moment, the enormous booster accomplished its mission, turning to perform a maneuver and returning to the Mechazilla tower and here There was an impressive scene.

The giant arms of the Tower managed to successfully capture the SuperHeavy, marking the second captured landing in history, everything occurred in less than 7 minutes, generating applause from the ground team, located kilometers away.

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Meanwhile, at the top of the rocket, StarShip itself ignited its six raptor engines and continued its ascent at maximum power. It was then that the story took a dramatic turn. After approximately 8 and a half minutes of flight, mission control lost contact with the rocket. the ship the screen showing only silence, no telemetry, no video, nothing.

Then SpaceX confirmed the worst, the unscheduled rapid disassembly, the famous euphemism for saying that the ship exploded, Elon Musk quickly explained in X that there was a liquid oxygen leak over the engine firewall, which generated pressure in an inappropriate area condemning the vehicle.

Scenarios like this are not new to the bold StarShip program, SpaceX has always emphasized that all test flights are crucial to learning from mistakes and there is no escape from developing fully reusable rockets, however, not everything was a disaster the flight demonstrated that stage separation at full power-up works and the SuperHeavy can return and be reliably captured by the tower and that the second generation of the alerted StarShip repositioned without further propon capability responded well in the first few minutes.

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These are impressive advances for a program that is still evolving, the flight plan included the StarShip performing simulated orbital maneuvers and in the end landing softly in the Indian Ocean, an ambitious objective that this time had a premature outcome, even so, this mission It accomplished much of what SpaceX intended to test new hardware features, review the behavior of the updated engines, and collect critical data for the next attempt.

Finally, the only element that was truly off-script was the impact on air traffic. Burning fragments of the rocket fell into the Caribbean Sea, forcing some routes to modify their routes to avoid crossing with the remains, a reminder that while seeking achievements gigantic safety in the air, land and sea continues to be a priority for the authorities, thus concludes another chapter in the epic of the StarShip, which generates fascination and fear, but without a doubt pushes the frontier of space exploration in each test.

Engineers and scientists are now dedicated to meticulously analyzing the data left by this mission, learnings that will undoubtedly prepare the ground for the next flight, in what Musk calls the last frontier in the race to reach the red planet.

Official website

The images without reference were created with AI Le immagini senza riferimento sono state create con l'intelligenza artificiale

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