SpaceX Starship Headed To Mars Exploded Yesterday

SpaceX Starship
SpaceX starship

SpaceX starship prototype, built on the technology Elon Musk, CEO hoped for putting humans on the planet Mars, crashed on Thursday afternoon in South Texas in the riskiest and highest test flight yet.

Elon Musk On SpaceX Starship Crash Landing

SpaceX Starship SN8 climbed for around five minutes in the air before steering back onto its launch site where it is supposed to make a landing like Falcon 9 rockets. SpaceX intended to collect data from how SN8 reenters the atmosphere of the Earth after traveling back from an extraterrestrial mission and how it should steer itself onto the landing point. Musk still called the mission a win. Musk later tweeted that the touchdown velocity became high due to low fuel tank pressure while landing burn. They got every bit of data that was required. SpaceX always embraces fiery mishaps happening during the development process of a rocket.

The company explains how such accidents pave the most efficient and quickest way of collecting data. This approach is however different from NASA that prefers methodical and slow testing over many dramatic burn-ups. However, the test flight on Wednesday went better than many people expected after the CEO of SpaceX declared the chances of SpaceX Starship SN8 vehicle’s surviving this test flight as one-in-three.

The company launched its starship 20 minutes ahead of their launch window time frame. The company should launch rockets only within a time frame designated by FVA so that no interference happens with boat and plane traffic. Large smoke of steam was found venting from the rocket while fuelling. Less than 2 minutes during flight one Raptor engine powered down. After another minute, another engine shut off with only one engine remaining to power the climb. After five minutes the final engine powered down. The rocket fell sideways. Because of an issue with the fuel tank, the rocket got engulfed by giant fumes of fire and the SN8 slammed into the ground.