On Saturday, SpaceX launched its second Starship rocket flight, marking yet another significant advancement in the creation of Elon Musk’s massive spacecraft.

Starship took off from the company’s Texas facility at around eight in the morning ET and flew for over seven minutes, safely separating from its booster before the rocket’s onboard technology purposefully killed the vehicle in midair.

There were no passengers on the test flight.

“We have lost the data from the second stage … what we do believe right now is that the Automated Flight Termination System on the second stage appears to have triggered very late in the burn,” John Insprucker, SpaceX principal integration engineer, said on the company’s webcast.

Rockets come equipped with a flight termination mechanism, which is designed to kill the vehicle in the event of an issue or if it deviates from its intended path. According to SpaceX’s webcast, Starship appeared to have exploded at a height of roughly 485,000 feet, or 148 km. That is just about half the height of the Earth’s orbit around the International Space Station.

SpaceX intended to fly Starship most of the way around the Earth before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii, thus its deliberate destruction marks an early end to the flight test.

“An incredibly successful day, even though we did have a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ both of the Super Heavy booster and the ship,” SpaceX quality engineering manager Kate Tice said on the webcast.

Before SpaceX launches another Starship rocket, the Federal Aviation Administration has stated that it will supervise a “mishap” inquiry into the flight, as is required by law.

The FAA conducts accident investigations to determine the reason behind a rocket launch failure, particularly in cases where a vehicle is destroyed. Before SpaceX is granted a licence for the launch of Starships in the future, the regulator can require the business to fulfil certain corrective steps. Following the launch, the FAA released a statement stating that “no injuries or public property damage have been reported.”

Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, commended the business for its “progress on today’s flight test.”

“Spaceflight is a bold adventure demanding a can-do spirit and daring innovation. Today’s test is an opportunity to learn—then fly again,” Nelson said in a social media post.

Earlier this week, the FAA gave SpaceX the go-ahead for the second launch.

April saw the first launch of a complete Starship rocket system by SpaceX. Even though that flight was unsuccessful in reaching space, it was successful in setting several firsts for an experimental rocket of never-before-seen proportions. The rocket’s demise in midair and an examination of the harm done to the ground resulted in a nearly seven-month-long regulatory study.

The attempt at launch follows fresh criticism of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk for remarks he made on the internet. Musk’s “abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate” on his social media platform, X, was denounced by the White House on Friday.

The tallest and most potent rocket ever launched is called Starship. When fully assembled atop the Super Heavy rocket, Starship has a height of 397 feet and a diameter of roughly 30 feet.

The rocket’s voyage into orbit is initiated by the 232-foot-tall Super Heavy booster. Its foundation consists of 33 Raptor engines, which collectively provide 16.7 million pounds of thrust, about twice as much as NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which had its maiden launch in late 2018.

With six Raptor engines, three for use in Earth’s atmosphere and three for use in interstellar vacuum, the 165-foot-tall starship is equipped with these engines.

Liquid oxygen and liquid methane power the rocket. For launch, the entire system needs more than 10 million pounds of propellant.

With its entirely reusable design, the Starship system seeks to replace current means of transporting people and goods beyond Earth. The rocket is also essential to NASA’s goal of sending humans back to the moon. As part of NASA’s Artemis moon programme, SpaceX was awarded a multibillion dollar contract by the organisation to employ Starship as a crewed lunar lander.

Prior to this, Musk stated that he anticipated the business will invest roughly $2 billion in Starship development this year.

This was Starship’s effort to enter space without any human occupants. Prior to the rocket’s launch with a crew, SpaceX hopes to complete hundreds of Starship missions, as the company’s executives have previously stated.

With its attempt on Saturday, SpaceX aimed to go beyond the first rocket’s almost 4-minute flight, reach space, and show that upgrades to its ground infrastructure lessened the harm from the initial launch.

Only thirty of the thirty-three Raptor engines at the base of the Super Heavy rocket were ignited by SpaceX during the April launch. A few other engines died in midair. In addition, there was an unanticipated delay in activating the rocket’s Autonomous Flight Termination System, which destroys the spacecraft in the event that it deviates from its intended path due to a communications issue.

Upgrades to the rocket’s architecture and the launch pad infrastructure were implemented by SpaceX for the effort.

(Adapted from CNBC.com)