SpaceX’s Starship rocket takes off on maiden test flight, but explodes in midair

() — SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket built to date, lifted off from a launch pad off the South Texas coast Thursday at 9:28 a.m. ET but exploded in midair before separation phase.

Thursday’s launch marked the vehicle’s historic first test flight. “As if the flight test wasn’t exciting enough, Starship underwent an unscheduled rapid disassembly prior to the separation phase,” SpaceX tweeted.

The massive Super Heavy rocket booster, housing 33 engines, lifted off and sent a huge rumble across the coastal landscape when it ignited. The Starship, mounted on the booster, rose above the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX’s Starship lifts off for an uncrewed test flight in Boca Chica, Texas on April 20. (Go Nakamura/Reuters)

About two and a half minutes after liftoff, the Super Heavy rocket booster was scheduled to expend most of its fuel and separate from the Starship spacecraft, leaving the booster to discard in the ocean. The Starship was to use its own engines, which were on for over six minutes, to propel itself at near-orbital speeds.

SpaceX said that “the teams will continue to review the data and work toward our next flight test.”

Although it ended in an explosion, Thursday’s test met several of the company’s goals for the vehicle.

Clearing the launch pad was a major milestone for Starship. In the run-up to liftoff on Thursday, Musk tried to temper expectations by saying, “Success is not what you should expect… That would be crazy.”

“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX looks to make life multiplanetary,” SpaceX said in a tweet after the explosion.

As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023

Elon Musk’s company tried to make a first launch on Monday, but couldn’t due to a technical problem.

The test flight comes after years of explosive tests, regulatory hurdles and public exaggerations by Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX.

Musk has talked about the Starship for years, giving elaborate presentations about its design and purpose, and often harps on its potential to transport cargo and humans to Mars, though NASA also plans to use the vehicle to get its astronauts to the Moon. He has even said that his sole purpose in founding SpaceX was to develop a vehicle like the Starship that could establish a human settlement on the red planet.

Throngs of spectators flocked to the local beaches to watch the Starship take off, with folding chairs, children and dogs in tow. The influx of public was similar to that of Monday, in the company’s first launch attempt, which was ultimately grounded while engineers worked to fix a problem with a valve on the Super Heavy rocket.

In the area around Starbase – the name SpaceX calls the Starship development center, located in the southern tip of Texas – many locals have received the rocket with fervent enthusiasm. Throughout the area, there are signs that the starship is permeating the local culture: a model starship in a backyard, a “Rocket Ranch” campground filled with die-hard enthusiasts, and a billboard advertising Martian beer.

Why didn’t Starship take off on Monday?

The launch was canceled due to what the SpaceX broadcast said was a pressurization issue.

“A pressurizing valve appears to be frozen so unless it starts working soon, there is no launch today,” tweeted Musk at the time.

The team continued to execute some launch operations and kept the countdown running in a practice known as “wet dress rehearsal” even after making the decision to cancel the launch attempt. Finally, they stopped the countdown clock with 40 seconds left.

It’s common for first-time releases to be delayed as engineers fix issues that may not have been apparent during prior testing.

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, for example, underwent four attempts to complete a wet dress test and two launch attempts before the vehicle finally lifted off in November 2022.

What to know about this rocket?

Starship development has taken place at SpaceX’s private spaceport, about 40 minutes from Brownsville, Texas, on the US-Mexico border.

The tests began years ago with brief “jump tests” of the first prototypes of spacecraft. The company began with short flights that rose a few tens of meters from the ground before evolving into high altitude flightsmost of which resulted in spectacular explosions when the company tried to land them upright.

However, a suborbital flight test in May 2021 ended successfully.

Since then, SpaceX has also been working to prepare its Super Heavy rocket for flight. The gigantic 69-meter-tall cylinder is equipped with 33 of the company’s Raptor engines.

Fully stacked, the Starship and Super Heavy have a height of about 120 meters.