Elon Musk’s space exploration company, SpaceX, has exploded again during the landing process of the’starship’ prototype of the Mars migrant spacecraft being developed.
SpaceX’s second starship prototype’SN9′, which was tested for the second time at 2:25 pm local time at the Boca Chica launch base in Texas, USA, succeeded in flying up to an altitude of about 10 km, but failed to land, according to Reuters and Bloomberg. Etc. reported on the 2nd (local time).
Earlier, SpaceX’s starship prototype’SN8′ also successfully reached the highest height by flying for 6 minutes and 42 seconds during a test launch on December 9, last year, but it exploded during landing.
Regarding this explosion, SpaceX said, “Like the last December experiment, it looked very good and stable.” I said.
Next, SpaceX said, “The engineers are going to figure out what went wrong based on the data collected through this experiment,” and “We will return to another starship in the near future.”
The explosion of the unmanned aerial vehicle SN9, reaching the height of the 16th floor of the building, is believed to be due to an error in the process of attempting to land on the ground using aerodynamic control after pointing the nose, the front of the aircraft, down.
The SN9 stopped the engine immediately after reaching the highest point and attempted a’fuselage landing’ in which the body of the aircraft was still touching the ground, but the problem appeared to have occurred while trying to re-ignite the recoil propulsion engine by raising the nose up again for the final landing. Reuters said.
Bloomberg analyzed that the second of the three Raptor engines on the SN9, which was responsible for slowing down the speed for landing, may not have been properly ignited.
The SN9 plunged into the ground and exploded with flames, and a third tense model,’SN10′, was erected nearby, but it was not damaged.
Starship is a giant spacecraft that SpaceX is developing with the goal of human migration to Mars. A complete 120 m long unit will carry 100 humans and 100 tons of cargo to and from the Moon and Mars.
In October last year, Musk said he was 80-90% confident that Starship would be ready for orbital flight this year.
(Photo = AFP, Reuters, Yonhap News)