by CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX suspects a fire may have caused its spacecraft to break apart during launch, leaving trails of burning debris near the Caribbean.
SpaceX’s Elon Musk said preliminary indications suggested that leaking fuel had built up pressure in the cavity above the engine firewall. The resulting fire would have doomed the spacecraft.
On Friday, the company promised “a thorough investigation” in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration.
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The 400-foot-long spacecraft – the world’s largest and most powerful rocket – launched on a test flight from the southern tip of Texas early Thursday evening. The booster made it back to the landing site for only the second time in the spacecraft’s history, only to be caught by giant mechanical arms. But the still-ascending spacecraft’s engines gradually shut down and communications stopped after 8 1/2 minutes of the flight.
A dramatic video shot near the Turks and Caicos Islands showed spacecraft debris raining down from the sky in a stream of fireballs. Flights near the falling debris had to be diverted.
SpaceX said Starship remained in its intended launch corridor over the Gulf of Mexico and then the Atlantic Ocean. All remaining wreckage would have fallen over the water this way, the company said on its website.
Starship had fired at a controlled entry across the Indian Ocean, halfway around the world. Onboard were ten dummy satellites that mimicked SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites so the company could practice releasing them.
It was the seventh test flight of a spacecraft, albeit with a new and improved spacecraft. The booster and spaceship for the eighth demo have already been built and are being tested.
Musk said up
NASA has already booked two spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon later this decade as part of its Artemis program, the successor to Apollo.
“Space travel is not easy. This is anything but routine,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote after the accident on X. “That’s why these tests are so important.”
Earlier Thursday, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company also had mixed results with the debut of its giant New Glenn rocket. On the first attempt, it reached orbit and carried a test satellite thousands of miles above Earth. But the launch vehicle was destroyed because it could not land on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
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