The huge Starship rocket has exploded again. He took off this Thursday from the Spacex base in Texas, but within a few minutes he lost contact and exploded as in the test last January, leaving debris in Florida that forced the closing of four airports, including that of Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
The powerful ship took off at 18:30 local time (23:30 GMT) of the base in Boca Chica, in southern Texas, on the border with Mexico. The first stage of the rocket, the Super Heavy propeller achieved, return to the Starbase and be caught by the tweezers, but the upper stage lost contact and exploded leaving remains in a large area of southern Florida and the Bahamas.
The company of the technological tycoon Elon Musk has not talked about the explosion of the Starship during this eighth test, and as always that these events happen, it called it a “rapid and unforeseen disassembly” after losing contact with the Operations Center in Texas.
In the seventh test, carried out on January 16, the same thing happened and was described as an explosion for several witnesses in the Caribbean, a region where debris went to stop and where air operations were altered.
This time the remains of the Starship surprised drivers and passers -by in Florida who did not understand what was happening and saw what they described as a “drifting ship.” Residents of the Bay of Tampa in Madeira Beach and Tampa, on the west coast of Florida, reported having seen the explosion in the sky.
The rain of debris forced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA, in English) to order for about an hour the restriction of flights at the airports of Miami, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, in the south and center of Florida.
The prohibition “follows the failed launch of the Starship of Spacex, which took off Starbase in southern Texas,” said the FAA in her X account.
This federal agency had already announced an investigation after the explosion last January, and this time indicated that it is demanding from Spacex to investigate today’s ruling.
Tampa International Airport was not affected by the delay, but warned that two flights to Miami International Airport were diverted to that city on the west coast of Florida. The outputs in the four airports were delayed on average about 45 minutes, according to FAA.
The agency activated an area of response to debris, briefly reduced the speed of the aircraft outside the area where the remains fell or stopped them in its exit.
The failed Starship had to fly in a suborbital trajectory for approximately one hour, after which he planned to merit in the Indian Ocean.
The Starship is designed to undertake long -range trips, capable of transporting large crew and satellites. In these initial test flights, the idea is not to reach orbit but turn the planet and descend by the tail ahead and propelled by rockets in the Indian Ocean.
In these last two without success of Spacex, the company expected the deployment of payload, in this case four simulated Starlink satellites.
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