SpaceX Starship Prototype Exploded In The Latest Flight Test But Elon Musk Is Happy

SpaceX was successful in retrying the launch debut for its Starship SN8, however, it exploded at the company’s base in Texa, US, on Wednesday. As the vehicle was landing, it has an aerial flip then blasted in a glorious fire.

However, this event still marks a major step forward for the forthcoming legacy vehicle of the company, which is designed to bring humans from Earth to Mars. The launch of the Starship SN8 was live-streamed on YouTube through SpaceX’s official channel.

At around 5:45 PM EST, the Starship SN8 was launched successfully with an aerial flip while it was in the upper atmosphere of the planet. Nevertheless, as it was descending and landing, things went wrong. Elon Musk posted on Twitter, saying:

“Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX!”

For the record, the test launch had only a third of the chance of success. Despite the explosion, the company collected all the data it needed from this test, considering it a big leap forward.

Elon Musk posted another tweet that says “Mar, here we come!!!”

On Wednesday afternoon, SpaceX launched the Starship SN8 from its launch site in Southern Texas. The vehicle reached the upper atmosphere, had an aerial flip, and maintained vertical one the way back down. However, its speed wasn’t reduced enough to avoid the influence of the landing pad in an explosive fireball.

It was the first time the company’s launched the vehicle at a high altitude with a maximum altitude planned to be about 12.5 kilometers. Previously, test flights took the Starship only 150 meters high without any flaps, nose cone, or any other signature feature necessary to control the flight in the upper atmosphere. This is a difficult task considering the vehicle is over 50 meters tall with a wide body.

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