SpaceX loses Starship rocket stage again, but catches giant Super Heavy booster during Flight 8 launch (video)
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Starship's eighth flight was a lot like its seventh.
SpaceX launched the eighth test flight of its Starship megarocket today (March 6), sending the 403-foot-tall (123 meters) vehicle aloft from its Starbase site in South Texas at 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT; 5:30 p.m. local Texas time).
Seven minutes later, Starship's huge first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, returned to Starbase for a dramatic catch by the launch tower's "chopstick" arms. It was the third time that SpaceX has demonstrated this jaw-dropping technique.
Starship's 171-foot-tall (52-meter-tall) upper stage — called Starship, or just "Ship" — kept flying, heading southeast toward the Atlantic Ocean. The Flight 8 plan called for Ship to deploy four payloads — dummy versions of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites — on its suborbital trajectory about 17.5 minutes after liftoff before coming in for a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean off of Western Australia roughly 50 minutes later.
That didn't happen, however. Several of Ship's six Raptor engines conked out toward the end of its ascent burn, and the vehicle began to tumble. SpaceX lost contact with Ship about nine minutes into the flight, and it presumably detonated high in the sky shortly thereafter.
Today's results mirrored those of Starship Flight 7, which launched on Jan. 16. SpaceX pulled off a Super Heavy chopsticks catch on that day as well, and it lost Ship at about the same point in the mission.
"Obviously a lot to go through, a lot to dig through, and we're going to go right at it," SpaceX's Dan Huot said during live launch commentary today after Ship was lost. "We have some more to learn about this vehicle."
Spectators in the Bahamas spotted debris from Starship upper stage falling back to Earth in a fiery light show as the Ship vehicle broke apart.
Related: SpaceX catches Super Heavy booster on Starship Flight 7 test but loses upper stage (video, photos)
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SpaceX traced the Flight 7 anomaly to "a harmonic response several times stronger in flight than had been seen during testing, which led to increased stress on hardware in the propulsion system," the company wrote in a Feb. 24 update. That stress caused propellant leaks, which in turn triggered "sustained fires."
(The SpaceX-led investigation into the mishap is ongoing, but the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration recently gave the company permission to launch Flight 8 after completing a safety review.)
SpaceX took steps to minimize the chances that the problem would recur on Flight 8. For example, it conducted an extra-long 60-second "static fire" test with Flight 8's Ship, a sustained trial that "informed hardware changes to the fuel feedlines to vacuum engines, adjustments to propellant temperatures, and a new operating thrust target," SpaceX wrote in last month's update.
"Additional vents and a new purge system utilizing gaseous nitrogen are being added to the current generation of ships to make the area more robust to propellant leakage," the company added.
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During operational missions, SpaceX plans to bring both Super Heavy and Ship back to Starbase for launch-tower catches. This strategy will reduce the time between launches for the fully reusable rocket, which SpaceX aims to fly multiple times per day.
So, prior to today's launch, the company made some modifications to help facilitate a future Ship chopsticks catch. For example, SpaceX removed some heat-shield tiles from the Flight 8 upper stage to stress-test certain vulnerable areas.
"Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, will test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry," SpaceX wrote in a Flight 8 mission description. "On the sides of the vehicle, non-structural versions of Starship's catch fittings are installed to test the fittings' thermal performance, along with a section of the tile line receiving a smoothed and tapered edge to address hot spots observed during reentry on Starship's sixth flight test."
In addition, the company tested radar sensors on the Starbase launch tower during Flight 8, "with the goal of increasing the accuracy when measuring distances between the chopsticks and a returning vehicle."
It's too soon to say what went wrong on Flight 8, so it's unclear what further changes SpaceX may make going forward.
Related: Explosion of Starship Flight 7 traced to fires in rocket's 'attic,' SpaceX says
SpaceX believes Starship's combination of immense power and full reusability will make Mars settlement — a long-held goal of company founder and CEO Elon Musk — economically feasible.
The rocket flew in a fully stacked configuration for the first time in April 2023. It flew twice that year and four times in 2024. We should expect another boost in cadence this year, perhaps a dramatic one; SpaceX has requested approval for 25 Starship launches from Starbase in 2025.
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