SpaceX has an idea why its latest Starship megarocket test flight missed the first of two planned landings on Friday (Nov. 13), triggering an automatic abort that destroyed the booster.
The giant Starship rocket, a massive two-stage vehicle that's the largest launcher on Earth, soared into orbit from SpaceX's Starbase in South Texas on Friday on the company's ambitious Flight 15 test flight. The goal: To land both the Super Heavy first stage and the Ship upper stage, for the first full Starship recovery — and the first complete recovery of an orbital launch system in history.
The Super Heavy stage, called Booster 22, came back to Earth mere minutes after liftoff as planned. Instead of returning to its launch tower to be caught mid-air by the tower's metal "chopstick" arms, however, the rocket veered off shore and detonated its flight termination system. A guidance issue appears to be the reason, SpaceX now says. Follow our Starship Flight 15 live updates for the latest on the mission.
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"We were initially 'go' for a catch," SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said during live commentary about seven hours into the mission. "But in the later stages of the coast, the booster aborted itself for a GNC issue that it detected, and that put it into its contingency landing offshore." Super Heavy exploded a few feet above the waves of the Gulf of Mexico about 6.5 minutes after liftoff.
GNC is short for Guidance and Navigation Control, a criticial system used by rockets to control their flight and ensure they remain on their planned course. Such a system is vital for any landing attempt by a Starship Super Heavy or Ship upper stage to ensure the vehicle returns to its landing site safely and doesn't veer off course to damage SpaceX's Starbase or surrounding populated areas.
Super Heavy is powered by a cluster of 33 Raptor rocket engines that fire simultaneously during liftoff to send the 41-story Starship megarocket into orbit. During Friday's launch, all 33 engines fired as planned for the ascent, Huot said.
One engine did drop out after stage separation, when Super Heavy dropped away from Ship and flipped over for a "boostback" burn to begin its trip back to Earth, Huot said.
"We had 32 out of the 33 booster engines lit for boostback, which started sending it back here to the launch site," he added.
The guidance issue for Super Heavy appeared to occur during the booster's landing burn, when it fires 13 Raptor engines to slow itself for its tower approach before shifting to fewer and fewer engines. In SpaceX's launch video, the 13 engines can be seen activating, followed by the abort and the booster steering itself to a contingency landing zone in Gulf waters.
"It did that hover, cut the engines off, the FTS — the flight termination system — triggered, and it splashed down in the water," Huot said. (The FTS is designed to destroy a booster in the event of an emergency.)
As its name suggests, Starship Flight 15 is SpaceX's 15th test flight of the giant rocket, but it will be the first to attempt to catch a Ship upper stage with the chopsticks. SpaceX has successfully caught Super Heavy boosters on three test flights to date.
Flight 15's Ship vehicle is in good health and will orbit Earth a total of 14 times before landing back at its launch pad in Starbase at around 4:20 p.m. EST (1920 GMT) today, if all goes well.
