A brand new video captures the drama and excitement of the second-ever test flight of SpaceX’s giant recent Starship vehicle.
That drama included two massive explosions — the “rapid unscheduled disassemblies,” in SpaceX parlance — of Starship’s lower and upper stages, which occurred about 4 minutes and eight minutes, respectively, after the Nov. 18 liftoff.
The 2-minute video, which SpaceX posted to X (formerly generally known as Twitter) on Dec. 7, doesn’t draw back from the 2 blasts. Relatively, it highlights them, punctuating the primary with a shot of SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk smiling and high-fiving folks in mission control.
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Musk and other SpaceX personnel — who’re seen celebrating en masse in other parts of the video — were completely happy because Starship notched some major milestones through the flight, which launched from the corporate’s Starbase site in South Texas.
For instance, all 33 Raptor engines on Starship’s first-stage booster, called Super Heavy, did their jobs well, burning for the required 2.5 minutes or so. And Super Heavy separated successfully from the upper stage, which ignited its Raptors on schedule as well.
Starship didn’t hit either of those marks during its debut flight, which launched from Starbase on April 20. A handful of Super Heavy’s Raptors conked out early that day, and the 2 stages didn’t separate, causing SpaceX to detonate the tumbling vehicle intentionally about 4 minutes after liftoff.
The April 20 launch also did considerable damage to Starbase’s orbital launch mount, blasting a giant crater out beneath the structure. SpaceX installed a water-spewing steel plate to guard the mount going forward, and the fix was effective; the mount made it through last month’s launch just about intact, company representatives said.
Each of those test flights aimed to send Starship’s upper stage most of the best way around Earth, culminating with a splashdown within the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. Super Heavy, meanwhile, was speculated to come down within the Gulf of Mexico, off the Texas coast. But full success is not normally expected on test flights, especially when the vehicle involved is the most important, strongest rocket ever built.
SpaceX is now gearing up for Starship’s third flight, which could occur in a matter of weeks, provided the paperwork comes through. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which grants launch licenses, is currently overseeing an investigation into what happened on the Nov. 18 mission.
SpaceX sees Starship helping humanity settle and moon, Mars and other worlds beyond Earth. NASA buys into that vision; the agency chosen Starship as the primary crewed lander for its Artemis program of lunar exploration.
If all goes in accordance with plan, Starship will carry astronauts to the moon’s surface on the Artemis 3 mission, which NASA goals to launch in late 2025 or 2026.