SpaceX loses the top of the Starship rocket but manages to catch its booster in flight

A prototype of the Starship rocket from SpaceX, Elon Musk’s aeronautical company, has suffered a failure in space just a few minutes after takeoff. A much improved version of the first Starship, about 37 stories high, has managed to take off from its facilities in Boca Chica, Texas at 10:38 p.m. Spanish time, although the joy was short-lived.

This seventh test mission was to include a first attempt to deploy satellites, an objective not achieved due to a failure just seven minutes after launch that forced the mission to be interrupted. “We lost all communications with the ship,” SpaceX communications director Dan Huot reported in a live broadcast.

After takeoff, the upper part of the ship separated from its Super Heavy booster four minutes into the flight, as planned. Shortly afterwards, “an anomaly with the upper stage” occurred, Huot stated, confirming minutes later that the ship had been lost.

The imposing Super Heavy rocket, for its part, has returned to its launch platform, in a descent maneuver from space in which it has restarted its Raptor engines while hooking itself to gigantic mechanical arms fixed to a launch tower. This landing success was SpaceX’s second in three attempts.