SpaceX launched its Starship rocket on its latest test flight Thursday, catching the booster back at the pad but losing contact with the ascending spacecraft as engines went out.
Officials for Elon Musk’s company said the spacecraft was destroyed.
The spacecraft was supposed to soar across the Gulf of Mexico on a near loop around the world similar to previous test flights. SpaceX had packed it with 10 dummy satellites for practice at releasing them. It was the first flight of this new and upgraded spacecraft.
Before the loss, SpaceX for the second time used giant mechanical arms to catch the booster back at the pad minutes after liftoff from Texas. The descending booster hovered over the launch pad before being gripped by a pair of mechanical arms dubbed chopsticks.
The 400-foot (123-meter) rocket thundered away in late afternoon from Boca Chica near the Mexican border. The late hour ensured a daylight entry halfway around the world.
Skimming space, the shiny retro-looking spacecraft — intended by Musk as a moon and Mars ships — targeted the Indian Ocean for a controlled but destructive end to the hourlong demo.
SpaceX beefed up the catch tower after November’s launch ended up damaging sensors on the robotic arms, forcing the team to forgo a capture attempt. That booster was steered into the gulf instead.
The company also upgraded the spacecraft for the latest demo. The test satellites were the same size as SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites and, like the spacecraft, meant to drop into the Indian Ocean to close out the mission. Contact was lost about 8 1/2 minutes into the flight.
Musk plans to launch actual Starlinks on Starships before moving on to other satellites and, eventually, crews.
It was the seventh test flight for the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket. NASA has reserved a pair of Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. Musk’s goal is Mars.
“Every Starship launch is one more step closer towards Mars,” Musk said via X ahead of liftoff.
Hours hours earlier in Florida, another billionaire’s rocket company — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin — launched the newest supersized rocket, New Glenn. The rocket reached orbit on its first flight, successfully placing an experimental satellite thousands of miles above Earth. But the first-stage booster was destroyed, missing its targeted landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
SpaceX catches its Starship rocket back at the launch pad, but the spacecraft is destroyed
https://arab.news/yk7tc
SpaceX catches its Starship rocket back at the launch pad, but the spacecraft is destroyed
- For the second time, SpaceX used giant mechanical arms to catch its Starship rocket back at the pad minutes after liftoff
- The spacecraft was supposed to soar across the Gulf of Mexico on a near loop around the world similar to previous test flights
UN envoy hopeful on Cyprus, says multi-party summit premature
- Holguin said she was hopeful after meeting with Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman
- “While encouraging, the dialogue process between both leaders is at its early beginning”
NICOSIA: The key UN envoy seeking to break a deadlock in Cyprus’s long-running division said she was cautiously optimistic about a breakthrough but that it would be premature to convene a multi-nation summit on the conflict.
In an interview with Cyprus’s Phileleftheros daily, envoy Maria Angela Holguin said she was hopeful after meeting with Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman on December 11. She said their discussion, which agreed to focus also on confidence-building, was “deep, sincere and very straightforward.”
“While encouraging, the dialogue process between both leaders is at its early beginning. More will need to be done in order to strengthen the nascent momentum and establish a real climate of trust that would allow the Secretary-General to convene a 5+1 informal meeting,” said Holguin, a former Colombian foreign minister.
A 5+1 meeting would be an informal summit of the two Cypriot communities with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and representatives of Britain, Turkiye and Greece to define how to move forward and break a seven-year stalemate in peace talks. The three NATO nations are guarantor powers of Cyprus under a treaty which granted the island independence from Britain in 1960.
A power-sharing administration of Cypriot Greeks and Turks crumbled in 1963. Turkiye invaded the north of the island in 1974 after a brief coup engineered by the military then ruling Greece. The island has been split on ethnic lines ever since.
Turkish Cypriots live in a breakaway state in the north, while Greek Cypriots in the south run an internationally recognized administration representing the whole island in the European Union.
