Starship, the futuristic SpaceX prototype rocket on which billionaire Elon Musk's ambitions for multiplanetary travel are riding, flew farther than the last two attempts but ultimately exploded over the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, capping another bumpy test flight. The two-stage spacecraft-- the biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built-- lifted off around 6:36 pm (local time) from SpaceX's Starbase launch site on the Gulf Coast of Texas near Brownsville.
A live SpaceX webcast of the liftoff showed the rocket rising from the launch tower, billowing clouds of exhaust and water vapour. However, signs of trouble started emerging soon, with the first-stage Super Heavy booster blowing up instead of executing its planned splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
The upper-stage Starship vehicle, however, continued to climb to space, reaching its planned suborbital trajectory about nine minutes into the flight. But then the live feed showed Starship's payload doors failed to open in order to release a group of simulated satellites.
SpaceX then said its flight team had lost attitude control over Starship, leaving the vehicle in a spin as it continued to head for atmospheric re-entry. Mission teams vented fuel to reduce the force of the expected explosion, and onboard cameras cut out roughly 45 minutes into what was meant to be a 66-minute flight -- falling short of its target splashdown zone off Australia's west coast.
"Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly," SpaceX posted on X -- a familiar euphemism for fiery failure -- while stressing it would learn from the setback.
The ship--central to billionaire Elon Musk's dream of colonising Mars-- however, flew farther than on its two previous attempts in a small win for the SpaceX team.
Musk, meanwhile, vowed to pick up the pace. "Launch cadence for the next 3 flights will be faster - approximately one every 3 to 4 weeks," he said.
He did not say, however, whether he still planned to deliver a live stream about Mars that SpaceX had been promoting.
Standing 403 feet (123 meters) tall, the black-and-white behemoth is designed to eventually be fully reusable and launch at low cost, carrying Musk's hopes of making humanity a multi-planetary species. Starship has now completed nine integrated test flights atop its Super Heavy booster.
Elon Musk's company is betting that its "fail fast, learn fast" ethos, which helped it dominate commercial spaceflight, will once again pay off. One bright spot: the company has now caught the Super Heavy booster in the launch tower's giant robotic arms three times - a daring engineering feat it sees as key to rapid reusability and slashing costs.
The FAA recently approved an increase in Starship launches from five to 25 annually, stating the expanded schedule wouldn't harm the environment -- a decision that overruled objections from conservation groups concerned about impacts to sea turtles and shorebirds.
NASA is also counting on a variant of Starship to serve as the crew lander for Artemis 3, the mission to return Americans to the Moon.
