SPACEX'S STARSHIP FROM BOCA CHICA" WE HAVE LIFT OFF."

(Did you feel the earth shake this morning? Many of us were asleep, but the shaking and launch boom at Boca Chica 26 miles away was felt as far west as the Valley  International Country Club and beyond. The photo on top was taken by  Cris Valadez, one of our eight readers who lives on Dana Road.)

New York Times

Washington Post

SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, lifted off for a second test flight on Saturday, but lost contact after reaching an altitude of about 90 miles above Earth. Engineers said they believed an automated detonation occurred.

The nearly 400-foot-tall vehicle is being built to carry astronauts to the moon for NASA, and perhaps some day to send humans to Mars.

This was SpaceX's second attempted launch of its fully assembled Starship rocket and spacecraft early Saturday from its facility in South Texas. The first test flight in April 20 ended with the rocket tumbling and exploding when an onboard detonation system destroyed the vehicle as it veered off course.

Since then, SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration have been investigating the mishap. The FAA has cleared the company for a second flight after it made upgrades to the rocket and the launchpad and resolved concerns with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the environmental impacts of the first launch.

It flew for the first time on April from  SpaceX's launch site in Boca Chica, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. That flight ended after a few minutes when failing engines caused the rocket to tumble out of control at a high altitude. On this flight, the Super Heavy booster separated from the Starship upper stage, a successful test of changes designed to address those previous problems.

During this second trip, SpaceX aimed to achieve a better performance for the rocket. Here’s what else you need to know about how the flight went:

SpaceX made various changes to the rocket, and their efforts seem to have paid off for this flight. All 33 engines seemed to fire through the key early phases of the flight, and the upper stage separated from the rocket while continuing its flight for a number of minutes, a sign that earlier problems with the vehicle had been successfully addressed.

The Super Heavy booster exploded shortly after the separation while the upper Starship stage continued to travel. According to an indicator from SpaceX’s live blog, the vehicle reached an altitude of about 90 miles, putting it in space.

About 12 minutes after liftoff, John Insprucker, a SpaceX engineer said “We think we may have lost the second stage.” He added that an automated detonation has likely occurred.

If the flight had been fully successful, Starship would have completed a partial trip around the Earth before belly-flopping into the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii.

Starship is actually two vehicles — the Super Heavy rocket booster and the Starship spacecraft. The company intends both to be fully reusable in the future.

In April, during the first Starship flight, six of the 33 engines on the Super Heavy booster failed, causing the whole rocket to tumble before operators on the ground ordered it to self-destruct.

♦ Both SpaceX and NASA have been eager for a resumption of test flights. NASA is investing $4 billion in the vehicle, which it intends to use to land astronauts on the moon as part of its Artemis program. NASA says a return of humans to the lunar surface could come as soon as 2025, though that is likely to slip into 2026 or later.

♦ Starship is also critical to SpaceX’s plans to expand its Starlink satellite Internet service. Starship will be able to lift the company’s next-generation version of the satellites, which are larger and heavier.

♦ A successful test is key to NASA’s hope to return to the moon before China can land people there. China has said it plans to launch a crew to the moon by the end of the decade. But before NASA allows astronauts onboard Starship, SpaceX will need to prove the vehicle can fly safely and reliably.