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Updated April 23rd, 2021 at 21:38 IST

SpaceX SN11: Elon Musk explains why the SN11 landing failed

SpaceX SN11 failed at landing last week leaving a lot of questions for the fans and the Technoking. But, Elon Must recently explained why did SN11 landing fail

Reported by: Yash Tripathi
Image credit: AP/SpaceX
SpaceX | Image:self
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Last week, on March 30, SpaceX’s starship prototype, SN11, reached a height of 6.2 miles (10 kilometres) and nearly after six minutes during the landing procedure, SpaceX's broadcast cameras cut out. Later, it was informed that the SpaceX SN11 blasted off in the sky before touchdown. However, at first, no one was sure of what actually happened, and now Elon Musk has announced the problem occurred in the SpaceX SN11 test launch.

Why did the SpaceX SN11 test fail?

SpaceX's Starship Number 11 was doing well with a successful launch in the sky, however, the prototype went up in flames. For days, there was no explanation to what happened, but Elon Musk tweeted about it saying that the rocket didn't land because of a plumbing problem. 

The announcement via Twitter by SpaceX Technoking read: "Ascent phase, transition to horizontal & control during free fall were good. A (relatively) small CH4 leak led to fire on engine 2 & fried part of avionics, causing hard start attempting landing burn in CH4 turbopump. This is getting fixed 6 ways to Sunday".

This has certainly become a history in which the SpaceX SN11 crash is just a part of it. Lately, all four flights of the organisation were quite similar in which the prototypes perform really well until the end and then exploded. The previous, SN10 prototype had a safe landing but exploded about 8 minutes later. Nevertheless, SpaceX is popular for its persistence and it has already built the next Starship prototype called the SN15.

Increasing risks of collision

This comes after the space industry experts warned that the company SpaceX is rapidly adding to the number of satellites in orbit, heightening the risk of collisions between space objects, generating an abundance of debris. According to Business Insider, SpaceX’s Starlink has already blasted around 1,300 satellites into orbit and it now also plans for a mega constellation of up to 42,000 spacecraft in mid-2027. Even though SpaceX has said that its satellites can avoid collisions, experts, however, feel that if the satellites’ communications or operations fail in orbit, they become hazards to space traffic. 

(Promo Image -  AP/ SpaceX) 

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Published April 6th, 2021 at 19:06 IST

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