BERLIN — SpaceX’s Starship vehicle reached space on its second integrated test flight Nov. 18 but broke apart late in its ascent after successfully demonstrating the performance of its booster and a new stage separation technique.
The Starship/Super Heavy vehicle lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase test site at Boca Chica, Texas, at about 8:03 a.m. Eastern. Liftoff was delayed a few minutes because of a “late pressurization” issue with the upper stage, but no other issues were reported during the countdown.
The Super Heavy booster appeared to perform normally during its ascent, without any obvious failures of its Raptor engines, unlike the first flight in April where several Raptors shut down. Starship then ignited its six engines and separated from the booster about 2 minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff, testing a new “hot staging” technique where engine ignition takes place before stage separation to improve performance.
Super Heavy then planned to perform a “boostback” maneuver to prepare for a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. However, at about 3 minutes and 30 seconds after liftoff the booster broke apart in what SpaceX called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” The cause for the breakup was not immediately clear, although SpaceX hosts of its launch webcast noted that one purpose for the flight was to test how the booster could manage the stresses from the hot staging.
The Starship continued to ascend, with a planned engine cutoff eight and a half minutes after liftoff. However, near the end of the burn contact with the vehicle was lost. At the time of the loss of telemetry, Starship was at an altitude of 148 kilometers and going more than 24,000 kilometers per hour, close to orbital velocity.
“We think we may have lost the second stage,” John Insprucker, principal integration engineer at SpaceX, said on the webcast. He said the automated flight termination system on Starship was activated “very late in the…
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