Three months after the previous launch of the Starship launch vehicle, which resulted in the loss of the launch vehicle and booster, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has completed its investigation into the incident.

SpaceX identified and the FAA accepted the root causes and 17 corrective actions documented in SpaceX’s incident report. Before the next launch, SpaceX must complete all corrective actions and obtain a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental and other applicable regulatory requirements.

– says the statement of the federal agency.

SpaceX still has to submit additional information to the FAA about its responsibility for the safety of people and property on the ground before the agency completes its review of the application to launch Starship a third time. The likely deadline for the completion of the regulatory process is early to mid-March, according to ArsTechnica.

What went wrong

SpaceX noted that the first stage of the Super Heavy rocket was performing as it should, with all 33 Raptor engines firing successfully. The launch vehicle then completed a complete burn cycle to achieve stage separation. At this point, the booster unit performed a hot withdrawal maneuver in which the Starship stage separated from the booster while some of the booster engines were still running.

The next step for the Super Heavy was to perform a series of ignitions for a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico. During the first test, 13 rocket engines were supposed to work. But several engines began to shut down before a single engine failed, quickly leading to a rapid unplanned destruction of the launch vehicle

The problem was later traced to a problem with the supply of liquid oxygen to the Raptor engines. The most likely root cause of the RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly) failure of the booster was determined to be blockage of the filter through which liquid oxygen is supplied to the engines, which led to a loss of inlet pressure in the turbopumps of the engines’ oxidizers, and as a result led to the loss of the ship .

Starship vents

The device was supposed to fly almost two-thirds of the way around the Earth before falling near the Hawaiian Islands. However, about seven minutes after takeoff, there was a large release of liquid oxygen. According to SpaceX, the craft had an excess of liquid oxygen to collect data needed for future payload deployment missions. It had to be released before the Starship went down.

A leak in the spacecraft’s aft section, which occurred when the liquid oxygen vent was started, led to a burn and subsequent fires, leading to a loss of communication between the spacecraft’s on-board computers and a command shutdown of all six engines until the ascent burn was complete, after where the autonomous flight safety system detected a violation of the flight rules and activated the flight termination system, which led to the disintegration of the apparatus.

– Reported to the company

At that time, the device reached an altitude of 150 km and developed a speed of about 24,000 km/h. This is slightly less than the orbital speed, which is 28,000 km/h.

In a statement, SpaceX said it was making changes to the Super Heavy and Starship stages to address these issues. The company is also looking to improve the Starship’s overall performance by adding a new electronic thrust vector control system for the Starship’s upper-stage Raptor engines and a faster pre-launch fuel loading system.

SpaceX has four Starships in the final or near-final stages of construction. If the next flight goes smoothly, the company may start launching the world’s largest rocket more often.

SpaceX has requested permission from the FAA for at least 9 Starship test launches this year

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