Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship explodes during ‘routine' Texas test, no injuries reported
The Starship 36 suffered 'catastrophic failure and exploded' at the Starbase launch facility shortly after 11pm (0400 GMT Thursday), a Facebook post by the Cameron County authorities said.
Musk's Space X said the rocket was preparing for the tenth flight test when it 'experienced a major anomaly while on a test stand at Starbase'.
'A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for,' Space X added on social media.
'There are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities, and we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue.'
Starbase on the south Texas coast, near the border with Mexico, is the headquarters for Musk's space project.
Standing 123m tall, Starship is the world's largest and most powerful rocket and central to Musk's long-term vision of colonizing Mars.
The latest setback follows an explosion of a prototype Starship over the Indian Ocean in late May.
The biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built had lifted off on May 27 from the Starbase facility, but the first-stage Super Heavy booster blew up instead of executing its planned splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
The previous two outings also ended poorly, with the upper stage disintegrating over the Caribbean. — AFP
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Malay Mail
a day ago
- Malay Mail
T. rex wins the jaw wars, but rivals found other ways to kill dinner
Tyrannosaurus possessed the highest estimated bite force Evolutionary flexibility' seen in meat-eating dinosaurs WASHINGTON, Aug 16 — Tyrannosaurus subdued prey with raw power, using bone-crushing bite force. But other meat-eating dinosaurs that rivaled T. rex in size used different approaches. Giganotosaurus relied more on slashing and ripping flesh. And the long and narrow snout of Spinosaurus was well-adapted for catching fish. Researchers have documented the feeding biomechanics of meat-eating dinosaurs in a comprehensive analysis of the skull design and bite force of 17 species that prowled the landscape at various times from the dawn to the twilight of the age of dinosaurs. The study found that Tyrannosaurus possessed by far the highest estimated bite force, with a heavily reinforced skull and massive jaw muscles. But it showed that other dinosaur predators evolved successful approaches to bringing down prey even without matching the T. rex chomp. 'We found that large predatory dinosaurs didn't all evolve the same kind of skull to deal with the challenges of feeding at massive size,' said vertebrate paleontologist Andre Rowe of the University of Bristol in England, lead author of the study published this month in the journal Current Biology. 'Some, like T. rex, reinforced the skull to tolerate extremely high bite forces and the associated skull stresses. Others, like Allosaurus or Spinosaurus, went with lighter or possibly flexible builds that spread out stress in different ways. There's no single 'correct' way to be a giant meat-eater, and that's the point,' Rowe added. The study focused on species within the group, or clade, called theropods that includes the meat-eating dinosaurs. They ran from Herrerasaurus, which lived in Argentina about 230 million years ago and is one of the earliest-known dinosaurs, all the way to T. rex, which was present in western North America when an asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago and ended the age of dinosaurs. The researchers used three-dimensional models of the skulls of the 17 species, including two different specimens of Tyrannosaurus, and applied a method for simulating how structures respond to physical stress. They estimated muscle forces using digital muscle reconstructions based on living relatives of the dinosaurs – birds and crocodiles – then applied those forces to the skull models to simulate bites. 'Our focus wasn't raw bite force. We were testing how the skulls distributed that force under load, and how these distributions varied by each lineage of carnivores,' Rowe said. The early theropods examined in the study such as Herrerasaurus, which lived during the middle of the Triassic Period, and Dilophosaurus, which lived early in the Jurassic Period, exhibited much lower stress resistance than their later counterparts. They were lightly built dinosaurs and not well adapted to high bite forces, Rowe said. The increase in bite force and skull strength unfolded gradually over time, reaching its apex with Tyrannosaurus and its close relatives in a lineage called tyrannosaurs such as Daspletosaurus and Albertosaurus, which like T. rex appeared late in the Cretaceous Period. 'In tyrannosaurs, there's a big jump in skull strength and bite mechanics, coinciding with deeper skulls, more robust bone architecture and changes in jaw muscle attachment. So the ramp-up wasn't immediate. It evolved over time and in certain lineages more than others,' Rowe said. People take pictures near animatronic dinosaurs, Brachiosaurus, as they attend 'Jurassic World: The Experience' an immersive experience inspired by the Hollywood movie Jurassic World, set at Asiatique The Riverfront, in Bangkok, Thailand. — Reuters pic Tyrannosaurus, Giganotosaurus and Spinosaurus were three of the largest theropods, but their skulls were quite different. Perhaps the largest-known Tyrannosaurus is a specimen named Sue at the Field Museum in Chicago, at 40-1/2 feet (12.3 meters) long. Giganotosaurus and Spinosaurus rivaled T. rex in size. Giganotosaurus lived in Argentina in the middle of the Cretaceous, while Spinosaurus inhabited North Africa at around the same time, both predating Tyrannosaurus by roughly 30 million years. 'Giganotosaurus was large, but its skull wasn't built for the same kind of high-force feeding as T. rex. Spinosaurus had a long, narrow snout, which is consistent with a diet focused on fishing, though we have fossilized evidence that it ate other animals, such as pterosaurs,' Rowe said, referring to the flying reptiles that were cousins of the dinosaurs. One of the key takeaway messages, Rowe said, is that giant body size did not funnel all theropods toward the same design. Stronger bite force was one strategy, but not the only one, Rowe added. 'Some animals win with raw power, others by striking quickly or repeatedly. What we're seeing here is a spectrum of ecological adaptations. These animals weren't all trying to be T. rex clones. They were solving the same problem in different ways,' Rowe added. 'That kind of evolutionary flexibility,' Rowe added, 'probably helped them dominate ecosystems for so long.' — Reuters
Malay Mail
2 days ago
- Malay Mail
Legal spotlight falls on Roblox as US state sues over child safety and online predators
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 16 — The US state of Louisiana has filed a lawsuit accusing Roblox of facilitating the exploitation of children, prompting the online game platform to reject the claim as 'untrue' yesterday. A lawsuit filed by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill contends that Silicon Valley-based Roblox facilitates distribution of child sexual abuse material and the exploitation of minors. 'Roblox is overrun with harmful content and child predators because it prioritises user growth, revenue, and profits over child safety,' Murrill maintained in a release. The lawsuit charges Roblox with 'knowingly and intentionally' failing to implement basic safety controls to protect children. Nearly 82 million people use Roblox daily, with more than half of them being younger than 18 years of age, according to the suit. 'Any assertion that Roblox would intentionally put our users at risk of exploitation is simply untrue,' the company said yesterday in a posted response to the filing. 'No system is perfect and bad actors adapt to evade detection,' the company added, stressing that it works 'continuously' to promote a safe online environment on the platform. The Roblox online gaming and creation platform was founded in 2004 and allows users to play, create and share virtual experiences. Roblox is one of the most popular online platforms for children, 'offering a vibrant world of interactive games, imaginative play, and creative self-expression,' according to the nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI). A FOSI guide available at its website 'walks parents through the basics of Roblox, the ways children commonly engage with it, and how to use built-in features like content filters, chat settings, and screen time controls' for safety. Roblox announced major safety upgrades late last year, introducing remote parental controls and restricting communication features for users under 13. US-based FOSI endorsed the changes at the time, its chief saying Roblox was taking 'significant steps toward building a safer digital environment.' — AFP
Malay Mail
2 days ago
- Malay Mail
Black hole dances a star to death in gravity's deadliest hook-up
WASHINGTON, Aug 16 — Astronomers have observed the calamitous result of a star that picked the wrong dance partner. They have documented what appears to be a new type of supernova, as stellar explosions are known, that occurred when a massive star tried to swallow a black hole with which it had engaged in a lengthy pas de deux. The star, which was at least 10 times as massive as our sun, and the black hole, which had a similar mass, were gravitationally bound to one another in what is called a binary system. But as the distance separating them gradually narrowed, the black hole's immense gravitational pull appears to have distorted the star — stretching it out from its spherical shape — and siphoned off material before causing it to explode. 'We caught a massive star locked in a fatal tango with a black hole,' said astrophysicist Alexander Gagliano of the US National Science Foundation's Institute for AI and Fundamental Interactions located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lead author of the study published this week in the Astrophysical Journal. 'After shedding mass for years in a death spiral with the black hole, the massive star met its finale by exploding. It released more energy in a second than the sun has across its entire lifetime,' Gagliano added. The explosion occurred about 700 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 9.5 trillion km. 'The gravitational pulls of the two objects were actually similar because we think they had similar masses. But the star was much larger, so it was in the process of engulfing the black hole as the black hole pulled material off of it. The star was large but puffy, and the black hole was small but mighty. The black hole won out in the end,' Gagliano said. The researchers are not certain of the exact mechanism that caused the supernova. 'It's unclear if the distortion triggers an instability that drives the collapse of the star, and then the leftover stellar material gets rapidly eaten by the black hole, or if the black hole completely pulls the star apart before it goes supernova,' said Harvard University astrophysicist and study co-author Ashley Villar. 'The star has been pulled and morphed by the black hole in complex ways,' Villar added. The binary system started out with two massive stars orbiting each other as cosmic companions. But one of the two stars reached the end of its natural life cycle and exploded in a supernova, and its core collapsed to form a black hole, an extraordinarily dense object with gravity so strong that not even light can escape. 'This event reveals that some supernovae can be triggered by black hole companions, giving us new insights into how some stars end their lives,' Villar said. Stars that are at least eight times as massive as the sun appear destined to end their lives with a supernova. Those with a mass at least 20 times that of the sun will form a black hole after the explosion. An artificial intelligence algorithm designed to scan for unusual explosions in the cosmos in real time first detected the beginnings of the explosion, providing an alert that enabled astronomers to carry out follow-up observations immediately. By the time the explosion was completed, it had been observed by numerous ground-based and space-based telescopes. 'Our AI algorithm allowed us to launch a comprehensive observational study early enough to really see the full picture for the first time,' Gagliano said. Observations of the star dating to four years before the supernova revealed bright emissions that the astronomers believe were caused when the black hole guzzled material sucked off the star. For instance, the star's outer hydrogen layer appears to have been ripped off, exposing the helium layer below. The researchers observed bright emissions in the explosion's aftermath as the black hole consumed leftover stellar debris. In the end, the black hole became more massive and more powerful. Systems grouping two or more companions are quite common. Some of these multiples have a black hole as one of the companions. 'Our takeaway is that the fates of stars are incredibly impacted by their companion — or companions — in life. This event gives us an exciting window into how dramatically black holes can impact the deaths of massive stars,' Gagliano said. — Reuters
