In the ninth flight test, Spacex Lanza Starship but does not complete the mission

Elon Musk and Spacex are getting a little closer to send humans to Mars, but they still have a lot of work to do.

After the last two test flights ended prematurely with the destruction of the spacecraft, the launch of Tuesday’s spacecraft showed that the vehicle could successfully reach orbit. However, an apparent leakage of propellants after the ship entered its suborbital trajectory caused a loss of attitude control, leaving the spacecraft and the control of the mission unable to control the ship.

Without the ability to direct the ship, Spacex said he returned to the earth’s atmosphere at an angle that is not ideal for his heat shield. As a result, the majority was expected to be burned, with the remaining pieces that fall in the Indian Ocean. The company said it cleared a large area of ​​the landing zone to guarantee public safety.

The company published a Declaration in x Reading: “As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unchanging disassembly. The teams will continue to review the data and work towards our next flight test. With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve the reliability of the spacecraft as Spacex seeks to make a multi -purpose life.”

Mounted on a super heavy rocket that works with 33 Raptor engines, the spacecraft without success successfully took away from the Spacex Starbase test installation in southern Texas, just after 7:30 pm et. The sound of the building’s shaking was audible since the 33 engines illuminated in the powerful rocket that promoted the spacecraft beyond the tower and towards its planned suborbital trajectory.

With almost 400 feet high, Spacex says that the spacecraft and its reinforcement are the most powerful rocket system ever developed. And unlike the company’s Falcon 9 of the company, Spacex points out that the spacecraft be totally reusable and capable of launching, landing and flying again with minimal maintenance.

The launch of Tuesday is part of the Iterative Appacex approach for engineering. With each mission, the company evaluates the data, makes adjustments to the spacecraft and is based on its previous successes and lessons learned from failures. These flight test learnings apply to future vehicles and missions until the spacecraft is ready for passengers.

For the mission of Tuesday, Spacex made significant modifications in the upper stage based on lessons learned from previous flight tests, including the last two that resulted in the destruction of the spacecraft.

During the eighth Starship flight test in early March, several engines unexpectedly closed about 5 1/2 minutes at the launch, resulting in Spacex lost control of the ship. Communication with the vehicle was lost several minutes later.

After an investigation, the company said that a “hardware failure” with one of the engines caused the fuel to mix and turn on where it should not have done so. And although the ship was not instructed to self -destruct, Spacex says it probably did it automatically.

As the spacecraft broke, the debris fell through southern Florida and parts of the Atlantic, which led to land stop at nearby airports. The photos and videos shared on social networks showed rocket debris scratching in the sky.

A similar failure occurred in January when the strongest vibrations than expected caused a leak and explosion of the propeller. In both cases, the upper stage was lost, but the reinforcement of the first stage was successfully returned to the launch and trapped site using giant “sticks” united to the launch tower.

Spacex said he has made significant modifications in the upper stage depending on what he learned from the previous flight tests and pointed out that, although both failures occurred at the same time during the missions, the causes were not related.

There are no astronauts aboard the previous missions, and none was on board this time.

According to Spacex, the ninth test on Tuesday marked “the first launch of a super heavy reinforcement proven in flight”, one that flew and returned during the seventh test flight. Of the 33 reinforcement engines, 29 were also reused from the previous test. The engineers inspected and replaced known components of a single use, such as the heat shield, but left the mostly intact reinforcement to study the wear of the real world.

Unlike the two previous missions, where the heavy reinforcement returned to its launch site, during the launch of Tuesday, the reinforcement followed a modified flight route that included a flip before it seems to have exploded while splashed in the Gulf. The data and the video were lost before the reinforcement hit the water, but the company said it finally ended in the ocean.

After achieving its planned trajectory in space, Starship’s upper scenario tried to implement a set of Starlink simulated satellites to test their payload implementation capabilities. However, the mission control could not open the doors for the test. Spacex said they will try again in a future mission.

After the Spacex spacecraft exploded in March during that test flight, Musk wrote “Rockets Are Hard” in X. Tuesday night, it was a marked reminder of how hard the space trip can be.