SpaceX loses contact with Starship rocket minutes after reaching space

SpaceX’s uncrewed spacecraft Starship, developed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, reached space for the first time on Saturday but was presumed to have failed minutes later, in a second test after its first attempt to reach space ended in an explosion. The booster had sent the rocketship toward space, but communication was lost eight minutes after liftoff from South Texas and SpaceX declared that the vehicle had failed. The trouble cropped up as the ship’s engines were almost done firing to put it on an around-the-world path. Minutes earlier, the booster exploded, but not until its job was done, putting the ship on a course toward space. The two-stage rocketship, blasted off from the Elon Musk-owned company’s Starbase launch site near Boca Chica in Texas, on a planned 90-minute flight into space, but contact was lost roughly 10 minutes after lift-off, a company broadcaster said. “We have lost the data from the second stage… we think we may have lost the second stage,” SpaceX’s livestream host John Insprucker said. At 400 feet, Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. The first test flight in April ended in an explosion soon after liftoff. Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. Its first flight in April lasted four minutes, with the wreckage crashing into the gulf. Since then, Elon Musk’s company has made dozens of improvements to the booster and its 33 engines as well as the launch pad. With inputs from agencies.