Certainly one of SpaceX’s Starship launch automobiles exploded on a take a look at stand in Texas late on Wednesday night time, as the corporate ready for the tenth take a look at flight of the heavy-lift rocket system.
SpaceX stated “all personnel are protected and accounted for” in a submit on X, and claimed there are “no hazards to residents in surrounding communities.” The corporate didn’t present a proof for the explosion.
It’s not instantly clear what influence this can have on SpaceX’s improvement of the Starship rocket system. A current advisory from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) advised the tenth take a look at flight may have occurred as quickly as June 29.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stated in a submit seemingly associated to the explosion that he considers it to be: “Only a scratch.”
SpaceX has spent the previous few years aggressively creating the 171-foot Starship and the huge 232-foot Tremendous Heavy booster that powers it into area. The corporate began 2025 saying this yr could be a “transformational” one for this system, and the FAA lately elevated its restrict on Starship launches in Texas from 5 to 25.
However Starship, specifically, has had quite a lot of issues this yr. The rocket unexpectedly exploded throughout its seventh take a look at flight in January, after which once more in March. It failed once more throughout its ninth take a look at in Might.
Whereas the rocket made it additional into its most up-to-date flight in Might than throughout the earlier two assessments, it nonetheless did not deploy the dummy Starlink satellites it was carrying onboard — an important step within the firm’s plan to make use of the mega-rocket to develop its space-based web service.
Musk has maintained that SpaceX is on observe to attempt to ship a Starship to Mars in 2026, giving it a “50/50” likelihood in an organization replace in Might. The corporate can be creating a bigger “Model 3” of Starship that, Musk claimed, may fly as early as this yr.
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