Last week, the SpaceX Starship suffered what the space company called an “emergency unscheduled disassembly”. In other words, the rocket just exploded. The good news is that the rocket launched successfully and spent about 4 minutes in flight before ending its journey with an epic disaster that was noticed even from space.
In fact, even in the failure, SpaceX received a lot of valuable data about the flight characteristics of the rocket. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said before the flight that “Starship had only a 50% chance of completing its first mission”. Therefore, all the risks were calculated long before the flight, and the explosion did not come as a surprise. The findings of the investigation into the causes of the malfunction will allow the company to improve the systems in order to get a better chance next time to complete a second test flight and eventually send Starship into orbit.
Make it to 2025
NASA plans to use a modified version of the Starship spacecraft – called the Starship Human Landing System (HLS) – for the Artemis III mission, which will be the first crew landing on the Moon since 1972. Next year, astronauts will reach the Moon’s orbit on NASA’s newly tested Orion spacecraft. But the flight with landing on our natural moon will take place on the Starship HLS. Artemis III is scheduled for 2025. Will Elon Musk have time to build a modified and serviceable spacecraft to carry out the planned historic mission in two years?
After the high-profile accident, Musk announced on Twitter that SpaceX hoped to try again in a few months. This mission will be crucial for NASA’s plans to land astronauts on the moon’s surface again in two years.
Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship!
Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months. pic.twitter.com/gswdFut1dK
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 20, 2023
Given the current situation, SpaceX will undoubtedly take Starship into orbit during the next test flight no later than the end of 2023. Whatever happens in the future, there is no doubt that Musk’s dream of using Super Heavy and Starship to send people beyond the Moon to Mars remains unchanged. It’s just going to take some time. Therefore, it is possible that the mission may be postponed in order to build a reliable and safe spacecraft.
Earlier we reported on how a “dead” NASA satellite fell to Earth.
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