January 17, 2025
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Elon Musk has said that the explosion of the SpaceX Starship could be caused by a propellant leak
The seventh test flight of SpaceX’s Starship ended with a successful landing of the rocket’s first stage, but also the loss of the Starship vehicle.
The two stages of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket separate during the vehicle’s seventh test flight on January 16, 2025. The upper stage was lost about six minutes later.
The explosion that destroyed the upper stage of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle yesterday (January 16) was caused by a leak, Elon Musk said.
starship It was launched yesterday evening SpaceX‘s Starbase site in South Texas, shot seventh flight test of the 403-foot-tall (123-meter) megarocket.
At first things went well. The vehicle’s two stages—the Super Heavy booster and the Ship upper stage spacecraft—separated in time, and the Super Heavy returned to the Starbase as planned, where it was captured by the launch tower’s “bell” arms.
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The ship ran into trouble after her partner’s big moment, however. The 171-foot-tall (52 m) craft broke up over the Atlantic Ocean approximately 8.5 minutes after takeoff. creating a sky show Sighted by observers in the Turks and Caicos Islands and other nearby locations.
While the anomaly is still early in the investigation, SpaceX has already identified a likely cause, according to company founder and CEO Musk.
“Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the marine engine bulkhead, which was sufficient to create pressure beyond wind capacity. In addition to double checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that. volume and possibly increase airspace. Musk said via Xhis own social media platform, about 2.5 hours after Flight 7 launched. (The Starship’s Raptor engines are powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane.)
As the last part of that post indicates, SpaceX wants to do it Starship fly frequently in 2025; the company has requested megarocket launches from Starbase 25 times this year.
That pressure overload apparently caused a fire “in the rear portion of the spacecraft, prompting an unscheduled rapid disassembly,” SpaceX wrote. Blog post about flight 7 yesterday evening, emphasizing that this interpretation is based on initial data analyses. (“Rapid unscheduled disassembly” is a term of art for a spacecraft explosion.)
“We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to improve future Starship flight tests,” the company added, referring to the US Federal Aviation Administration.
“Starship flew on its launch runway, as all U.S. launches do to protect the public on land, water and air,” SpaceX continued in the blog post. “All existing debris would have fallen into the designated hazard area.”
However, the anomaly had some effects beyond the SpaceX sphere. “The FAA slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where the space vehicle debris was falling,” agency officials told Space.com by email yesterday evening, and normal aircraft operations resumed shortly thereafter.
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