The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has completed its investigation into SpaceX’s second Starship flight, which took place in November last year and ended with mid-flight explosions of the first-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft.

美国联邦航空管理局 (FAA) 已完成对 SpaceX 第二次 Starship 飞行的调查，该飞行于去年 11 月进行，并以第一级超重型助推器和上级 Starship 航天器在飞行中爆炸而告终。

The Elon Musk-led spaceflight company is now awaiting approval to launch the Starship — the most powerful rocket ever to fly — on its third test flight, with the expectation that SpaceX could get the green light some time next month, with the rocket taking to the skies again a short while later.

埃隆·马斯克 (Elon Musk) 领导的航天公司目前正在等待发射星际飞船 (Starship) 的许可，这是有史以来最强大的火箭，进行第三次试飞，预计 SpaceX 可能会在下个月的某个时候获得批准，火箭将在过了一会儿，天空再次出现。

Following November’s flight test, SpaceX led the investigation efforts with oversight from the FAA and participation from NASA and the National Transportation Safety Board.

11 月的飞行测试后，SpaceX 在 FAA 的监督下以及 NASA 和国家运输安全委员会的参与下领导了调查工作。

“SpaceX identified, and the FAA accepts, the root causes and 17 corrective actions documented in SpaceX’s mishap report,” the FAA said in a statement released on Monday. “Prior to the next launch, SpaceX must implement all corrective actions and receive a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental, and other applicable regulatory requirements.”

FAA 在周一发布的一份声明中表示：“SpaceX 确定了 SpaceX 事故报告中记录的根本原因，并采取了 17 项纠正措施，并且 FAA 也接受了这一点。” “在下次发射之前，SpaceX 必须实施所有纠正措施，并获得美国联邦航空局 (FAA) 的许可证修改，以满足所有安全、环境和其他适用的监管要求。”

In a post on its website on Monday, SpaceX shared some details regarding its analysis of November’s flight, noting that it was the first Starship test to achieve stage separation after April’s maiden test flight failed just a few minutes after liftoff.

周一，SpaceX 在其网站上发布的一篇文章中分享了有关 11 月飞行分析的一些细节，并指出这是继 4 月首次试飞在升空后几分钟失败后首次实现阶段分离的星舰测试。

“Following stage separation, Super Heavy initiated its boostback burn, which sends commands to 13 of the vehicle’s 33 Raptor engines to propel the rocket toward its intended landing location,” SpaceX explained. “During this burn, several engines began shutting down before one engine failed energetically, quickly cascading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD) of the booster. The vehicle breakup occurred more than three-and-a-half minutes into the flight at an altitude of ~90 kilometers over the Gulf of Mexico.”

SpaceX 解释说：“在级分离后，Super Heavy 启动了助推燃烧，向火箭的 33 个猛禽发动机中的 13 个发送指令，推动火箭朝预定的着陆位置前进。” “在这次燃烧过程中，几台发动机开始关闭，然后一台发动机发生剧烈故障，迅速引发助推器的快速非计划拆卸（RUD）。飞行器在墨西哥湾上空约 90 公里的高度上空飞行 3 分半钟后发生故障。”

SpaceX said the most likely root cause for the booster RUD was “filter blockage where liquid oxygen is supplied to the engines, leading to a loss of inlet pressure in engine oxidizer turbopumps that eventually resulted in one engine failing in a way that resulted in loss of the vehicle.”

SpaceX 表示，助推器 RUD 最可能的根本原因是“向发动机供应液氧的过滤器堵塞，导致发动机氧化剂涡轮泵入口压力损失，最终导致一台发动机发生故障，导致发动机损失机动车。”

It said that to prevent this from happening again, it’s made hardware changes inside the booster oxidizer tanks to improve propellant filtration capabilities and also refined operations to increase reliability.

该公司表示，为了防止这种情况再次发生，它对助推氧化剂罐内的硬件进行了更改，以提高推进剂过滤能力，并改进了操作以提高可靠性。

In the same test flight, the Starship spacecraft continued on its journey until a leak of liquid oxygen propellant caused “a combustion event and subsequent fires that led to a loss of communication between the spacecraft’s flight computers,” which resulted in the loss of the vehicle shortly after. SpaceX said it has since made hardware changes to improve leak reduction and fire protection.

在同一次试飞中，星舰飞船继续其旅程，直到液氧推进剂泄漏导致“燃烧事件和随后的火灾，导致飞船飞行计算机之间的通信中断”，从而导致飞船损失不久之后。 SpaceX 表示，此后已对硬件进行了改造，以减少泄漏并提高防火性能。

“More Starships are ready to fly,” the company said as it awaits launch permission from the FAA.

该公司在等待美国联邦航空局的发射许可时表示：“更多的星际飞船已准备好飞行。”

SpaceX hopes to use its next-generation heavy-lift rocket for cargo and crew missions to the moon in the near future, and, looking further ahead, for similar flights to Mars, too.

SpaceX 希望在不久的将来使用其下一代重型火箭执行货运和载人登月任务，并且展望未来，也可以进行类似的火星飞行。