SpaceX’s Starship prototype exploded while attempting to land after an otherwise successful test launch from the company’s rocket facility in Boca Chica, Texas, live video of the flight showed.
The Starship rocket destroyed in the accident was a 16-storey-tall prototype for the heavy-lift launch vehicle being developed by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s private space company to carry humans and 100 tonnes of cargo on future missions to the moon and Mars.
The self-guided rocket blew up as it touched down on a landing pad following a controlled descent. The test flight had been intended to reach an altitude of 41,000 feet, propelled by three of SpaceX’s newly developed Raptor engines for the first time but it was unclear whether the rocket had flown that high.
On Wednesday, a trio of engines boosted the vehicle to its planned altitude, before navigation and flight-control systems, as expected, reoriented it for a vertical landing attempt near the company’s manufacturing and testing facility in southern Texas. The day before, the flight was scrubbed just before liftoff because of an automated engine warning.
Earlier versions of the gleaming stainless-steel spaceship—intended to transport people to the moon and eventually Mars—previously performed much simpler short hops, reaching an altitude of barely 500 feet. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the company’s formal name, also suffered a string of engine problems, structural failures and other technical setbacks before Wednesday’s liftoff.
SpaceX made its first attempt to launch Starship on Tuesday, but a problem with its Raptor engines forced an automatic abort just one second before liftoff.
The complete Starship rocket is the company’s next-generation fully reusable launch vehicle – the center of Musk’s ambitions to make human space travel more affordable and routine.