(Reuters) – SpaceX lost contact with its Starship rocket in space on Thursday during the company’s eighth test mission, dooming a satellite deployment demonstration in the company’s second consecutive Starship failure this year.
The 403-foot(123-meter)-tall rocket system lifted off at around 6:30 p.m. ET (2300 GMT) from SpaceX’s sprawling Boca Chica, Texas, rocket facilities, with its Super Heavy first stage booster returning back to land as planned.
But minutes later, the Starship upper stage began to spin out of control in space, SpaceX’s live stream showed. A visualization of the rocket’s engines showed multiple shutdowns before the company confirmed it had lost contact with the ship.
“Unfortunately this happened last time too so we’ve got some practice now,” SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said on the live stream.
A Starship test mission in January ended eight minutes into flight when the Starship exploded in space, raining debris over Caribbean islands.
(This story has been refiled to correct the conversion from ‘1223 meters’ to ‘123 meters,’ in paragraph 2)
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Leslie Adler and Sandra Maler)
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