LOST IN SPACE
Musk rocket blasts off and then goes missing
ELON Musk’s mega-rocket finally made it into space yesterday but contact was lost as it headed back to Earth.
The Tesla tycoon’s company SpaceX hailed the test launch as a success after two previous lift-offs ended in disaster.
The colossal 397ft Starship had been due to splash down in the Indian Ocean around an hour after launch.
SpaceX’s Dan Huot said: “The ship has been lost. So no splashdown today.
“But again, it’s incredible to see how much further we got this time around.”
Two test flights last year both ended in explosions just minutes after launch.
The Starship is intended to take humans back to the Moon and someday to Mars, while radically cutting the cost of space travel. It is designed to allow both stages to be recovered after a mission and then reused.
First launched in April last year, the Starship took off from its launchpad at Boca Chica, southern Texas, at roughly 6.25am local time yesterday.
All 33 Raptor rockets on the Super Heavy booster fired without incident, propelling the monster into space. No people or satellites were on board the craft.
But an hour later, SpaceX commentators said contact had been lost. The craft is thought to have broken up as it re-entered the atmosphere. During the flight, Musk had praised his team.
“SpaceX has come a long way,” the multi-billionaire boasted on X, formerly Twitter.
The rocket and futuristiclooking spacecraft are the biggest and most powerful ever built, easily surpassing NASA’s past and present moon rockets.
NASA scientists watched the flight with keen interest.
The US space agency needs Starship to succeed to land astronauts on the moon in the next two or so years.
The next generation of moonwalkers, the first since last century’s Apollo program, will descend to the lunar surface in a Starship for at least the first couple of their lunar expeditions.
SpaceX has previously said that even failed launches give its scientists valuable information.