Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, exploded during its first flight on Thursday (Apr 20), but Elon Musk congratulated his SpaceX team on an “exciting” test of the next-generation spacecraft designed to send astronauts to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
SpaceX blew up the uncrewed rocket four minutes after it blasted off at 8.33am Central Time (1333 GMT) from Starbase, the SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas.
The Starship spacecraft that will eventually carry crew and cargo had been scheduled to separate from the first-stage rocket booster three minutes into the flight, but separation failed to occur and the rocket disintegrated in a ball of fire over the Gulf of Mexico.
“The vehicle experienced multiple engines out during the flight test, lost altitude, and began to tumble,” SpaceX said. “The flight termination system was commanded on both the booster and ship.”
It is standard procedure to destroy a wayward rocket to prevent damage to people or property below.
Despite the failure to complete the full 90-minute flight test and reach orbit, SpaceX and Musk, the founder and CEO of the private space company, declared it a success.
“Congrats SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship!” Musk tweeted. “Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.”
“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and we learned a tremendous amount about the vehicle and ground systems today that will help us improve on future flights of Starship,” SpaceX said in a statement.
The US space agency NASA has picked Starship to ferry astronauts to the Moon in late 2025 for the first time since the Apollo programme ended in 1972.
NASA chief Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX, saying “every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward”.
