In this screengrab taken from a social media video, on June 18, 2025, a SpaceX rocket explodes in Brownsville, Texas, United States. TheRocketFuture via X/via REUTERS
The massive Starship spacecraft built by SpaceX exploded into a dramatic fireball late on Wednesday during testing in Texas. This was the latest setback for billionaire Elon Musk's Mars rocket program. The explosion occurred around 11 p.m. local time while Starship was on a test stand at its Brownsville, Texas Starbase while preparing for the tenth test flight, SpaceX said in a post on Musk’s social-media platform X.
The business stated that all employees were safe and that it was caused by a "major anomaly." The company stated that its engineering teams were looking into the incident and coordinating with local, state, and federal agencies regarding the impacts on environmental and safety. "Preliminary data suggests that a nitrogen COPV in the payload bay failed below its proof pressure," Musk said in a post on X, in a reference to a nitrogen gas storage unit known as a Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel. "If further investigation confirms that this is what happened, it is the first time ever for this design," he continued.
According to video of the Starship rocket's explosion, at least two explosions appeared to occur quickly, illuminating the night sky and sending debris flying. The 400-foot (122-meter) tall Starship rocket system is at the core of Musk's goal of sending humans to Mars. But it has been beset by a string of failures this year.
SpaceX's Starship rocket spun out of control about halfway through a flight at the end of May, preventing it from achieving some of its most crucial testing objectives. The Starship lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase, Texas, launch site, flying beyond the point of two previous explosive attempts earlier this year that sent debris streaking over Caribbean islands and forced dozens of airliners to divert course.
Two months earlier, minutes after taking off from Texas, the spacecraft exploded in space, prompting the United States The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is going to put an end to some of Florida's air traffic. Videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near South Florida and the Bahamas after Starship broke up in space shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX live stream of the mission showed. That explosion was deemed "a minor setback" by Musk. An agency-required investigation into the incident, the FAA stated earlier this month, had been closed, citing a possible hardware failure in one of the engines as the probable cause. The FAA stated that it verified that SpaceX had put eight corrective measures into place prior to the Starship mission in late May. A Starship rocket exploded in space in January, minutes after launching from Texas. The debris fell over Caribbean islands and damaged a car in the Turks and Caicos Islands, causing minor damage.
0 Comments