As the head of NASA rightly recalled on Thursday “spaceflight is not easy.” Bill Nelson was speaking after the explosion of the second stage of the Starship megarocket during a new test flight operated by the company SpaceX.
A semi-failure for Elon Musk’s company: during the same flight, SpaceX however managed to recover the rocket’s propellant after a complex maneuver to catch up with the first stage of the rocket which was able to return to its base launch.
A true technological feat: this is the second time that the rocket’s propellant, named Super Heavy, has been recovered in this way. Elo Musk sought to prove that this technical feat was not the result of chance, especially since Starship remains the largest ever built to date.
“Success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability”SpaceX immediately announced.
According to Elon Musk, the first stage explosion was probably triggered by a “oxygen/fuel leak”.
-For its part, the American aviation regulator, the FAA, reported having “briefly slowed down and diverted planes around the area where space vehicle debris fell”.
This test flight was to be a show of force for SpaceXa few hours after the success signed by Blue Origin, the space company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which carried out its first flight into orbit.
With his new New Glenn rocket, Jeff Bezos, who has adopted a more cautious approach, intends to challenge Elon Musk’s domination of the commercial orbital flight market.
