An unmanned SpaceX craft exploded in a massive fireball during an attempted test flight Wednesday in Texas — but CEO Elon Musk said the mission was largely a success.
The Starship SN8 crashed back to earth around 5:30 p.m. after reaching an altitude of about 40,000 feet over Boca Chica, according to reports and stunning video of the crash.
Musk lauded the test run on Twitter.
“Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high … but we got all the data we needed!” he wrote. “Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!
“Mars, here we come!!,” he added in a second tweet.
The rocket is part of the transportation system that SpaceX is developing with an eye toward eventually ferrying Earth-weary travelers to the moon and, one day, Mars.
The explosive ending, while visually stunning, was not entirely unexpected.
Musk last month pegged the odds of a flawless test launch at worse than fifty-fifty.
“Lot of things need to go right, so maybe 1/3 chance,” he wrote on Twitter when asked by a reporter how likely it was the craft would land intact.
Nearly the entirety of the test flight went exactly as planned, with the craft ascending skyward for a few minutes after launch, before the engines cut as planned.
It then entered freefall and went horizontal, before thrusters kicked in close to Earth for an attempted landing.
But, in the only apparent flaw of the test, the starship didn’t slow down soon enough or quickly enough, making for a rough and fiery landing.
The total time of the flight was six minutes and 42 seconds.
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December 10, 2020 at 06:14AM
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