SpaceX's Starship explodes (again) during its eighth test flight

SpaceX has lost another Starship, as the vehicle's eighth test flight ended in an explosion just like its seventh. The first few minutes of the flight went according to plan: SpaceX launched the Starship rocket from its Starbase facility in Texas at 6:30PM Eastern time on March 6, and its first stage Super Heavy booster flew back down and was successfully captured by the launch tower's "chopstick" arms. The event marked the third time SpaceX was able to capture the booster with the tower's mechanical appendages. 

The vehicle's upper stage called the "Ship" was supposed to deploy four dummy Starship satellites as part of the test run before splashing down into the Indian Ocean around 50 minutes later. But eight minutes into the flight, the Ship lost multiple Raptor engines, causing it to lose altitude until it ultimately exploded over the Caribbean. Several people who witnessed the event posted videos of the Ship's debris streaking across the sky. 

As TechCrunch notes, SpaceX revealed in February that the seventh Starship test flight exploded because it suffered from propellant leaks that resulted in fires. The company took several measures to prevent the same thing from happening, such as adding vents and a new purge system to make the ship resistant to leaks. SpaceX also conducted a longer static fire test to make sure its changes and adjustments were working properly. 

The company posted on X that the Starship's eighth test flight "experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly" during its ascent burn. However, it it still has to review data from the flight to be able to determine the root cause of the issue. In another statement posted on its website, the company said that "an energetic event in the aft portion of Starship" prior to the ascent burn led to the loss of the engines. SpaceX lost contact with the Ship completely at around nine minutes and 30 seconds after liftoff. The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily halted flights departing from and into some of Florida's busiest airports due to "space launch debris." It also told TechCrunch that it's requiring SpaceX to conduct a "mishap investigation" to determine the cause of the failure, so we'll likely get a more detailed report from the company in the future. 

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