‘Major Anomaly’ behind the latest explosion of Starship Spacex

Musk wrote that the nitrogen Copv seems to have failed below its test pressure, in conditions that should not have damaged the tank. “If further investigations confirm that this is what happened, it is the first time ever for this design,” added Musk.

Collecting the pieces

Last Wednesday, a few hours before the explosion late at night in Starbase, a consultant published by the Federal Aviation Administration showed that Spacex had set on June 29 as a provisional launch date for the next test flight of the stars. This will not happen now, and is guessed when Spacex will have another spaceship ready to fly.

The Massey test site, called for a range of weapons that once occupied the property, is located on a curve in the Rio Grande River, a few hundred meters from the Mexican border. The test site is currently the only place where Spacex can put the spaceships through test tests and static fire prevention tests before declaring that the rockets are ready to fly.

The extent of the damage to Massey’s land equipment was not immediately clear, so it is too early to say how long the test site will be out of service. For now, however, the explosion leaves Spacex without a structure to support preflight tests on astronavi.

The built -in videos below come from Nasasspaceflight.com and Labpadre, which show more corners of the explosion of spaceships.

The explosion of Massey’s is a reminder of Spacex’s rocky route to bring the spaceship at this point in its development. In 2020 and 2021, Spacex lost several prototypes of spaceships at problems during earth and flight tests. The view of the 36 ship that rises in flames dates back to those previous explosions, together with Infuocated dominates a Falcon 9 rocket On his launch pad in 2016 in circumstances similar to Wednesday evening accident.

Spacex has now launched nine missiles for spaceships on the vast scale since April 2023 and before the explosion, the company hoped to launch the tenth trial flight at the end of this month. The Starship track record has been terrible so far this year, with the three most recent Rocket test flights that end prematurely. These arrest trips followed a triumphant 2024, when Spacex made clear progress on each subsequent suborbital test flight of spaceships, culminating in the first capture of the super heavy booster of the rocket with giant robotic arms on the tower of the launch pad.

Stimped together, the super heavy stage and the Starship top stage are more than 400 feet high, creating the largest rocket ever built. Spacex has already flown a super heavy reused booster and the company has also designed the spaceship to be recoverable and reusable.

After the results of last year, Spacex seemed to be on the right way to a complete orbital flight, an attempt to capture and recover the spaceship itself and a Important demonstration of supply refueling in space In 2025. The fuel supply demo officially slipped in 2026, and it is questionable if Spacex will make enough progress in the coming months to try the recovery of a ship before the end of this year.

Ambition meets reality

Spacex debuted an updated astronave design, called version 2 or block 2, on a test flight in January. Since then it has been a setback after another.

The new Astronavi design is slightly higher than the version of Starship that Spacex flew in 2023 and 2024. It has an improved heat shield to better resist the extreme heat of the atmospheric return. Spacex has also installed a new fuel power supply system to instract the fuel for methane to the ship’s raptor engines and an Avionics module with improved propulsion that controls the vehicle valves and reading sensors.