Starship test flight reaches new milestone despite partial failure

SpaceX's latest Starship launch from Texas ended in an uncontrolled spin before completing key mission goals, highlighting fresh challenges for Elon Musk’s ambitious Mars program.

The 400-foot Starship rocket, central to Musk’s vision of human space travel to Mars, launched from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas but failed to achieve some critical objectives. Despite reaching beyond previous flight attempts, the lower-stage booster lost contact during descent and crashed into the sea instead of performing a controlled splashdown. The upper stage entered suborbital space but began spinning uncontrollably after about 30 minutes, causing the cancellation of a planned deployment of eight mock Starlink satellites.

Musk attributed the loss of control to a leak in the rocket’s primary fuel tank. Although the mission provided valuable data, these setbacks add hurdles to SpaceX’s fast-paced development plan, which aims for frequent launches every three to four weeks. The Starship is vital not only for Mars missions but also for NASA’s upcoming lunar program and replacing Falcon 9 as SpaceX’s main commercial launch vehicle.

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