Elon Musk with the scientists of SpaceX
SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, exploded on Thursday during the first test flight of the spacecraft designed to send astronauts to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
The gigantic rocket successfully blasted off at 8:33 a.m. Central Time (1333 GMT) from Starbase, the private SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas.
Despite the failure to complete the full flight test, SpaceX declared it a success.
SpaceX chief Elon Musk hailed the launch of the company's Starship rocket and tweeted, "Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! We learned a lot for the next test launch in a few months."
However, despite the claims by the SpaceX experts that clearing the tower was the only hope for SpaceX and that everything after clearing the tower was icing on the cake, the video footage of Elon Musk's upset expressions after explosion is going viral on the internet.
Watch the video here:
The integrated test flight was intended to assess their performance in combination. SpaceX founder Elon Musk had warned ahead of the launch that technical issues were likely and sought to play down expectations for the inaugural test flight.
"It's a very risky flight," he said. "It's the first launch of a very complicated, gigantic rocket."
"There's a million ways this rocket could fail," Musk said.