To get it out of the way because I know you’ve all been excited about this:

On February 2nd at 18:25 UTC, SpaceX finally launched their SN9 vehicle from Pad B at the Boca Chica Launch Site. We had all thought – including SpaceX – that this would happen last week, but the launch had to be delayed while SpaceX worked through public safety concerns with the FAA.

One of those concerns was random people being in unsafe locations during launch.

Which is a valid concern.

Yesterday’s launch took place after a brief hold in the count to allow the county sheriff to intercept a silver pickup truck in the restricted area. SN9 ascended smoothly up to ten kilometers, shutting down engines as necessary to limit flight aerodynamic loads and stay subsonic. 

At apogee, the vehicle tilted horizontally and began maneuvering using its aero surfaces. At about one kilometer altitude, the vehicle reignited two of its three engines and attempted to flip back vertical for landing. Unfortunately, only one of the engines successfully restarted, while unburnt propellant and flaming hunks of metal were observed coming from the other engine. This resulted in combustion instability in the engine that did ignite properly, turning the engine’s nice blue flame into a yellow color. 

The vehicle missed vertical as it tried to maneuver from its belly flop back upright for landing. SN9 impacted the ground at a weird angle, exploding and sending large pieces of metal, Composite Overwrap Pressure Vessels, and a cloud of liquid oxygen showering in every direction.

The entire flight lasted about 6 minutes and 26 seconds, and we have a full video linked to our website, DailySpace.org. 

As a reminder, SpaceX expects these kinds of dramatic failures while they work to design and test their rockets iteratively over time. They push their systems to the limits so they can learn more about how they can fail and engineer solutions. Also, SN9 is the rocket that fell over in the high bay. This is a rocket that had to be repaired after getting smooshed into a wall. SN9 fell over, got damaged, and still flew. That is kind of awesome.

More Information

Launch video

Forbes article