SpaceX Starship rocket launches, lands … and explodes eight minutes later
Thursday, 4 March 2021
After an abandoned attempt Thursday morning, Elon Musk's SpaceX launched its crewless Starship SN10 prototype at around 12.15pm.
The test rocket cruised to a high altitude flight from SpaceX's Texas base, reaching almost 10km above the Earth during the round trip.
However third time wasn’t the charm as SN10 was the third SpaceX rocket launch to end with an explosion. The Starship SN10 has a similar visual design to the two previous prototypes.
This time the destruction was delayed, rather than a crash landing. The prototype appeared to be steadying itself as planned, before bursting into flames around eight minutes after arriving on the landing pad.
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SpaceX’s live video feed of the launch cut off before the explosion occurred. In a tweet, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk celebrated the successful landing but didn’t mention the subsequent explosion.
After the first attempt to launch Starship SN10 was abandoned at 10.14am Thursday, Musk explained: “Launch abort on slightly conservative high thrust limit. Increasing thrust limit & recycling propellant for another flight attempt today.”
Last week Musk claimed in a video that Starship will be ready for manned flights that would head beyond orbit by 2023. The video was published by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa who intends to fly himself and eight others on a weeklong trip to the Moon with the help of SpaceX.
Maezawa claims over 100,000 people have applied for the eight free seats on his flight.