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SpaceX, the Starship spacecraft explodes and catches fire in flight: what happened

Credit: SpaceX

The seventh integrated flight test of the rocket Starship of SpaceX (a company owned by Elon Musk) has partially failed: the Ship spacecraft exploded in flight yesterday evening January 16, 2025 8 minutes and 26 seconds after takeoff, which took place at 11.37 pm Italian time. The Starship rocket is the bigger and more powerful never built with his own 123 meters highdesigned to return humans to the Moon (as part of NASA’s Artemis program) and subsequently to Mars. The test aimed to replicate everything that had been successfully done in previous attempts, including the automatic booster capture with robotic arms (which succeeded perfectly), with the addition of the releasing a load of fake Starlink satellites in space, but unfortunately something went wrong.

The booster was successfully captured about 7 minutes after launch, but a T+8:26 minutes since liftoff, SpaceX has lost contact with the spacecraft Shipthat is, the upper part of Starship. According to SpaceX’s first reconstructions, one loss of propellant caused first the progressive shutdown of the Starship’s engines and then the disintegration of the spacecraftwhich exploded in flight at 11.37pm Italian time. The explosion occurred at approximately 150 km altitude above the skies of the Caribbean, with the debris that subsequently re-entered and burned in the atmosphere over the Lesser Antilles, as shown in the spectacular video posted by Musk himself on country) to understand the reasons for the failure of the test, but Musk’s company has already announced that it will not cause this problem no delays in the busy Starship test programs scheduled for 2025.

What Elon Musk’s seventh Starship test involved

The seventh flight test Starship’s integrated program aimed to replicate everything that had been done in the fifth and sixth flight tests, with one new addition. The test in fact included the release for the first time of a demonstration load in spaceconsisting of 10 fake satellites of mass and structure similar to those of Starlink. The satellites were intended to be released approx 17 minutes after launchfollowing Starship’s trajectory and then also returning over the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia about 66 minutes after liftoff. On top of that, Space X had contributed several modifications to the rocket Starship, so much so that insiders even talked about one Starship version 2.0.

How the SpaceX rocket launch went

Starship took off on January 16th at 11.37pm Italian time from Starbase Of Boca Chica, Texas. The first phases of the flight test all went as planned, with the ignition of all 33 Raptor engines and the perfect execution of the maneuver hot stagingthat is, the ignition of the spacecraft when it was still anchored to the booster. The Superheavy booster he then returned independently, but in a controlled manner, to the ground, coming captured by robotic arms of the structure known as Mechazilla, replicating the maneuver already successfully performed during the fifth Starship test. The 33-engine booster gently settled into the arms of the tower approximately 7 minutes after takeoff.

So everything seemed to be going well, but… 8 minutes and 26 seconds after takeoff the Ship’s engines shut down one by one and SpaceX has permanently lost contact with the spacecraft. For at least an hour it wasn’t clear what had happened, until i social media were inundated with videos showing it spectacular re-entry of debris into the atmosphere. Apparently, in fact, the Ship has disintegrated 150 km over the Caribbean, then re-entering the atmosphere over the Lesser Antilles where the debris became incandescent and burned permanently.

Videos on social media also come from airliners that appear dangerously close to the debris drop zone. In reality, however, the FAA had already communicated the launch of the Starship to the airlines and at the moment of disintegration issued an emergency statement signaling the danger to nearby planes and interdicting the surrounding airspace.

What caused the Starship spacecraft to explode

From preliminary analyzes carried out by SpaceX, the cause of disintegration of the Ship spacecraft, approximately 8 minutes and 26 seconds after launch, appears to be due to loss of propellant in the cavity above the ship’s engine bulkhead. This loss was so copious that it has exceeded the capacity of the relief valves and this caused the spacecraft to explode. Already during the live broadcast, flames were noticed coming out of a hinge of the rear flaps, which was then followed by the progressive shutdown of the spacecraft’s engines and finally the loss of signal.

SpaceX has already started investigations, stating that it will add a new and refined fire prevention system and valves with increased venting capacity to the rocket. These tests serve precisely to evaluate all possible scenarios and to understand what can go wrong, which is fundamental to ensuring the safety of future human missions.