VIDEO Explosion at the new Starship rocket booster. SpaceX's failure in the race for NASA's expected future moon landing
Launch of a Starship rocket prepared by SpaceX in Boca Chica. JOE MARINO / UPI / Profimedia
An imposing booster of the improved version of the Starship rocket, developed by SpaceX, suffered a failure during a ground test on Friday morning in the US state of Texas, potentially complicating the company's efforts to demonstrate its rocket's moon landing capabilities for NASA, according to observers who captured the explosion in a video recording, reports Reuters, taken by Agerpres.
SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, placed that stainless steel thruster on Thursday on a test pad built at the US company's Starbase facility, saying it wanted to test its redesigned fueling systems and structural strength.
During a test on that ramp Friday morning around 04:00 local time, a video streamed live by LabPadre, a group that monitors SpaceX's activity, showed the booster suddenly curving and releasing a cloud of gases from its sides, indicating that a possible pressurized explosion had destroyed its outer shell.
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The US company is facing increasing pressure from NASA to advance the Starship rocket development program into a new phase of tests involving skills associated with the rocket's future moon landings, as part of a pair of multibillion-dollar missions for the US space agency that will return humans to the surface of the moon for the first time since 1972.
Those missions make Starship a central component of the U.S. lunar program, which is under increasing pressure to achieve a landing before another country, China, achieves the feat around 2030. NASA's interim and potential leadership teams have been battling each other over how best to get Americans back to the moon as China's space program continues to advance.
The booster that suffered that failure on Friday was the first of the Starship V3 generation, a version of the Starship rocket that SpaceX announced has a number of new designs and features associated with the lunar exploration program.
The company SpaceX is famous for the rapid production of many versions of thrusters as part of its strategy of intensive development of space rockets. It is not yet known if SpaceX has another V3 booster with which to resume testing, or if Friday's failure could delay the Starship rocket program by several months.
NASA representatives did not respond to the invitation to make statements on this topic.
Starbase, the space center of the SpaceX company dedicated to the Starship rocket in the south of the American state of Texas, has known in the past several explosions recorded during some tests. A Starship rocket booster exploded in a giant ball of flames during a test on a ground ramp in June, sending fragments as far as the US-Mexico border, 2 miles (3.2 km) away, and sparking political tensions with Mexico's president.
