During the test flight, the Starship lit up its engines and pushed away; that process destroyed the Super Heavy booster, which erupted into a ball of flames over the Gulf of Mexico.
However, the Starship spacecraft was able to briefly continue its journey.
So basically, stage one went well, but during the livestream, the SpaceX team shared that the “second stage was lost.”
Aerospace engineer, John Insprucker, said that the automated flight termination system was used in the second stage. The system is essentially a self-destruct feature that SpaceX engaged to prevent the Starship from travelling off course.
What do you call a super powerful rocket ship that explodes just after 7 minutes in flight? Well, a bit of a success, actually.
The Starship system made it much farther than the first attempt in April. So who knows, one day we could see this all-powerful projectile last for nine glorious minutes.
No one was hurt, but the Federal Aviation Administration will conduct a mishap investigation to determine the root cause of the loss of the ship, which is standard procedure.
According to the FAA “A return to flight of the Starship Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety”.
