Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket explodes minutes after launch; watch video

SpaceX made another attempt to send up the most powerful rocket ever built on Thursday, 20.

The launch was made from Starbase, SpaceX’s space base in Boca Chica, Texas.

The rocket exploded four minutes after its launch.

On Monday, liftoff was suspended minutes ahead of schedule due to a pressurization problem in the propulsion stage, according to information from SpaceX.

SUPER ROCKET

The US space agency Nasa has chosen the Starship spacecraft to take astronauts to the moon in late 2025 – in a mission called Artemis III – for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.

At 120 meters tall, Starship belongs to the category of super-heavy launchers, capable of carrying a payload larger than 100 tons into orbit.

Its takeoff power is expected to be more than double that of the legendary Saturn V – 111 meters – the rocket of the famous Apollo lunar program.

Starship consists of a reusable capsule about 50 meters high that carries the crew and cargo, located on top of the Super Heavy first-stage booster, about 70 meters long.

The spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster have never flown together. However, several suborbital flight tests of the spacecraft have already been conducted.

The original plan calls for the Super Heavy booster to be separated from the spacecraft three minutes after launch to land in the Gulf of Mexico.

With six engines, the aircraft will continue at about 240 km (150 miles), completing nearly one lap around the Earth before plunging into the Pacific Ocean about 90 minutes after launch.

WATCH THE VIDEO OF THE MOMENT OF THE SPACEX ROCKET EXPLOSION

‘MULTI-PLANETARY CIVILIZATION’

In February, Elon Musk’s SpaceX completed a successful launch test of all 33 Raptor engines on Starship’s first stage.

NASA will take astronauts to lunar orbit in November 2024 using its space rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), which has been developing for over a decade.

The Starship is larger and more powerful than the SLS, generating 17 million pounds of thrust, more than twice as much as the Saturn V rockets used to send astronauts to the moon on the Apollo missions.

SpaceX hopes to launch a starship into orbit and refuel it to continue its journey to Mars or beyond.

Musk clarified that the goal is to make Starship reusable to reduce the cost of missions to just a few million dollars per flight.

SpaceX on Monday postponed the first test flight of Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.

Takeoff was suspended minutes before the schedule at the Boca Chica base in Texas.

“Taking the long term, I don’t know, two or three years, we will have to get complete and rapid reuse.

Eventually, the goal is to establish bases on the Moon and Mars and put humanity on “the path of being a multi-planetary civilization,” Musk said.

“We are at the brief moment in civilization where it is possible to become a multi-planetary species,” he said.

“That’s our goal. I think we have a chance.”

With information from Exame