SpaceX lost contact with Starship during its eighth test flight
SpaceX said it had ‘lost’ its Starship spacecraft during a test launch.
‘We had a successful launch, successful separation, successfully captured the launch vehicle, unfortunately we lost communication, we are no longer receiving telemetry from the ship,’ a SpaceX spokesperson said during the broadcast.
At the same time, the Super Heavy rocket booster successfully returned to the launch pad.
The company later said there was a ‘rapid unscheduled dismantling’ during the spacecraft’s insertion into orbit. The term became popular after SpaceX specialists described the vehicle’s post-launch explosion in April 2023 in this way.
‘We will analyse today’s flight test data to better understand the cause. As always, success comes when we learn, and today’s flight will provide additional lessons learnt to improve Starship’s reliability,’ the company promised in X.
Meanwhile, social media users have been posting numerous videos of Starship debris supposedly falling. In Florida, four airports – in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Palm Beach – have been temporarily closed for this reason.
This is the second consecutive loss of a Starship spacecraft. The 17 January test, the seventh, also ended in failure.