Latest news with #Block2
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
SpaceX Starship Spins Out After Successful Launch, But It Didn't Explode This Time
SpaceX's latest launch of its Starship rockets was more successful than the past couple, but it still ended its launch out of control, eventually crashing down in the Indian Ocean. It did make it into orbit, though, and the claimed issues from previously explosive launches appear to have been fixed. This was also the first time Starship has used a refurbished first-stage booster. Starship is SpaceX's next-generation rocket and the largest one ever designed. If it ever reaches the same reliability for regular use as the long-running Falcon 9, it will have the ability to transport between 100 and 200 tonnes into low Earth orbit. Unfortunately, 2025 has seen Starship stumble, with two out of three launches ending in catastrophic explosions of the new Block 2 booster design, for various reasons. SpaceX will be largely happy with this latest launch, then, despite the problems it faced. The first stage booster completed its burn successfully and separated without issue. While the first-stage booster turned and began its burn back toward the launchpad for an intended splashdown landing, the Starship upper stage continued on, burning for a few more minutes to achieve "nominal orbital insertion." Unfortunately, that's when some issues cropped up. Initially, the cargo bay doors failed to open, so the dummy Starlink satellites couldn't be deployed. And then SpaceX lost control of the spacecraft. "Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and reentry phase," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk explained on Twitter/X. This loss of tank pressure meant that the Starship team lost the ability to control the ship's attitude, which led to the upper stage entering an uncontrolled spin. This meant that the Starship wasn't going to be able to hold its orbit, and a decision was made to bring it down as carefully as possible. All remaining fuel was vented and at around 46 minutes into its flight, Starship went dark and broke up into pieces over the Indian Ocean, as per Ars Technica. This was at least in its intended flight path, however, so there should be no danger of damage to human life or property due to falling debris. That wasn't the end to the launch woes, though. The first-stage booster also suffered an unknown issue, exploding soon after igniting its engines again for re-entry. That brought an explosive end to the first re-used Starship booster. SpaceX has announced plans to continue with launches of one Starship every three to four weeks for the rest of the year, with plans to introduce a new Block 3 design before the end of 2025 with greater lift capacity, and a new Raptor engine with greater reliability.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
SpaceX Has a Major Problem: New Versions of Starship Are Performing Worse Than Older Ones
Starship, the SpaceX megarocket that's slated to bring astronauts to the Moon and perhaps one day Mars, is hitting a major snag in its development: the latest version of the spacecraft, known as Block 2, is performing worse than its predecessor, in the New York Time's analysis. On Thursday, during Starship's eighth orbital flight test, the vehicle's upper stage exploded, showering debris down over the coast of Florida. Worse, it marked the second time that the Block 2 Starship blew up; a similarly spectacular scene played out during the previous flight test in late January, when the upper stage experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" over the Caribbean. The pair of botched flights could be a huge setback for SpaceX. "There's this persona that has built up around SpaceX, but you're starting to see that they're human, too," Daniel Dumbacher, a professor of engineering practice at Purdue University and a former NASA official, told the NYT. Until this year, the Elon Musk-owned aerospace company has made considerable strides with its flagship rocket, overcoming the ill omen of its explosive debut. Engineers have successfully demonstrated that the lower-stage Super Heavy booster can guide itself back to a launch tower and be caught midair, in a key step towards making the launch system reusable. They have also shown that the upper stage Raptor engines can be relit in the vacuum of space, which will be necessary if the Starship is to be able to perform controlled re-entries into the Earth's atmosphere. But the latest attempts to build on that progress have backfired. Both tests of Starship Block 2, which features a slightly larger upper stage with added heat shielding and a redesigned fuel line, have ended in midair explosions before reaching space. Whereas older iterations of the upper stage have successfully made it to orbit, flown thousands of miles, and re-entered for a splashdown in the ocean. Destruction is par for the course for SpaceX, whose ethos mirrors Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" approach. But what's especially worrying in this case with Starship, the NYT notes, is that the failures in both of the Block 2 tests appear to be caused by a similar issue in the area near the vehicle's engines. If so, that hints there's a huge design flaw in the new Starship that engineers haven't been able to figure out yet, according to the newspaper. Musk, for his part, brushed off the explosion. "Today was a minor setback," he wrote on X, following the blast. On the other hand, Musk exhibited extremely thin skin in response to detractors who mocked the latest failure, which could be a sign that, internally, the situation is more dire than he's willing to let on. Dumbacher is bullish on Starship's success, but even he's not certain how quickly SpaceX can turn things around. "I have no doubt that they'll get it addressed, and they'll get flying again and they'll get things fixed," Dumbacher told the NYT. "I just don't know how long it's going to take them to do that." More on Starship: SpaceX Says Numerous Fires Broke Out on Board Its Starship Spacecraft During Most Recent Launch
WIRED
08-03-2025
- Science
- WIRED
SpaceX's Latest Starship Explosion Marks Two Consecutive Failures
Stephen Clark, Ars Technica Mar 7, 2025 11:00 PM The new version of Starship will be tested again in four to six weeks. A third consecutive failure could indicate fundamental problems with the updated design. SpaceX's mega rocket Starship makes a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Thursday, March 6, 2025. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP Photo SpaceX's Starship launcher spun out of control minutes after liftoff Thursday, showering fiery debris over the Bahamas and dealing another setback to Elon Musk's rocket program after a failure under similar circumstances less than two months ago. Starship and its Super Heavy booster, loaded with millions of pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellants, lumbered off their launchpad in Texas at 5:30 pm Central time to begin the eighth full-scale test flight of SpaceX's new-generation rocket. Thirty-three Raptor engines propelled the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) rocket through a clear afternoon sky with more than twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket, the workhorse of the Apollo lunar program. Repeating a feat SpaceX accomplished with Starship twice before, the rocket's Super Heavy booster separated from the Starship upper stage roughly two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, then guided itself back to the Texas coastline for a catch by mechanical arms on the launchpad's tower. SpaceX is now 3-for-3 with attempts to catch a Super Heavy booster back at the launch site, a sign that engineers are well on their way to mastering how to recover and reuse boosters in a similar way as they do with the smaller workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. But SpaceX is now 0-for-2 on test flights of the newest version of Starship, called Block 2 or Version 2. The first six Starship test flights used an initial version of the ship, but SpaceX is modernizing its fleet with Starship Block 2, which stands slightly taller than the first version in order to accommodate additional propellants. Starship Block 2 also debuts smaller forward flaps to give the hardware another layer of protection from the scorching heat of reentry. The other notable change with Block 2 is a redesigned fuel-line system to feed propellants to the ship's six Raptor engines. Hardware Rich The good news is there are many more Starships under construction in South Texas, so SpaceX likely won't have to wait long to try again. The company started the year aiming for as many as 25 Starship test flights in 2025 but will end the first quarter of the year with just two. 'Today was a minor setback,' wrote Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, on X. 'Progress is measured by time. The next ship will be ready in 4 to 6 weeks.' SpaceX Starship Flight 8 launches from Orbital Launch Pad A at Boca Chica beach on March 06, 2025 in Boca Chica Beach, Texas. Photograph:SpaceX has contracts with NASA worth approximately $4 billion to design and develop a human-rated Moon lander based on the Starship design. The Starship lander is a central piece of NASA's architecture for the Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface later this decade. For Starship to fly to the Moon, SpaceX must refill it with super-cold propellants in low-Earth orbit, something no one has done at this scale before. Musk sees Starship as the interplanetary backbone for transporting cargo and people to Mars, one of his most consistent long-term goals. This, too, requires orbital refueling. Musk recently suggested SpaceX could be ready to demonstrate ship-to-ship orbital refueling in 2026, a year later than the 2025 goal NASA officials discussed in December. Starship will also launch SpaceX's next-generation Starlink Internet satellites. Before Thursday's launch, ground crews loaded four Starlink mock-ups inside Starship's payload bay to test the rocket's deployment mechanism. Officials were eager to assess the performance of Starship Block 2's heat shield before committing to an attempt to recover the ship intact (like SpaceX is already doing with the Super Heavy booster) on a future mission. But the premature ending of this test flight means those objectives must wait. SpaceX oversees Starship using an iterative development cycle. Engineers come up with new designs, rapidly test them, and then incorporate lessons learned into the next rocket. It's not surprising to see a few rockets blow up using this spiral development cycle. But back-to-back failures, especially with so many similarities, may point to a more fundamental issue. The flight plan going into Thursday's mission called for sending Starship on a journey halfway around the world from Texas, culminating in a controlled reentry over the Indian Ocean before splashing down northwest of Australia. The test flight was supposed to be a do-over of the previous Starship flight on January 16, when the rocket's upper stage—itself known as Starship, or ship—succumbed to fires fueled by leaking propellants in its engine bay. Engineers determined the most likely cause of the propellant leak was a harmonic response several times stronger than predicted, suggesting the vibrations during the ship's climb into space were in resonance with the vehicle's natural frequency. This would have intensified the vibrations beyond the levels engineers expected. The Super Heavy booster returned to Starbase in Texas to be caught back at the launch pad. Photograph: Scott Schilke/AP Photo Engineers test-fired the Starship vehicle earlier this month for this week's test flight, validating changes to propellant temperatures, operating thrust, and the ship's fuel feed lines leading to its six Raptor engines. But engineers missed something. On Thursday, the Raptor engines began shutting down on Starship about eight minutes into the flight, and the rocket started tumbling 90 miles (146 kilometers) over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX ground controllers lost all contact with the rocket about nine-and-a-half minutes after liftoff. 'Prior to the end of the ascent burn, an energetic event in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines,' SpaceX wrote on X. 'This in turn led to a loss of attitude control and ultimately a loss of communications with Starship.' Just like in January, residents and tourists across the Florida peninsula, the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos islands shared videos of fiery debris trails appearing in the twilight sky. Air traffic controllers diverted or delayed dozens of commercial airline flights flying through the debris footprint, just as they did in response to the January incident. There were no immediate reports Thursday of any Starship wreckage falling over populated areas. In January, residents in Turks and Caicos recovered small debris fragments, including one piece that caused minor damage when it struck a car. The debris field from Thursday's failed flight appeared to fall west of the areas where debris fell after Starship Flight 7. A spokesperson for the US Federal Aviation Administration said the regulatory agency will require SpaceX to perform an investigation into Thursday's Starship failure. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
