SpaceX's Starship, world's biggest rocket, explodes during test flight
The Starship capsule was scheduled to separate from the first-stage rocket booster three minutes into the flight, but separation failed to occur
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 from Starbase, the private SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas. The Starship capsule was scheduled to separate from the first-stage rocket booster three minutes into the flight but separation failed to occur and the rocket blew up.
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"As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation," SpaceX tweeted.
The planned initial liftoff on Monday was aborted less than 10 minutes ahead of the scheduled launch because of a pressurization issue in the first-stage booster.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk sought to play down expectations for the risk-laden inaugural test flight, casting some doubt on whether the launch would actually go ahead.
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Starship consists of a 164-foot tall spacecraft designed to carry crew and cargo that sits atop a 230-foot tall first-stage Super Heavy booster rocket. The U.S. space agency NASA has picked the Starship spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the Moon in late 2025 - a mission known as Artemis III - for the first time since the Apollo program ended in 1972.
SpaceX foresees eventually putting a Starship into orbit, and then refueling it with another Starship so it can continue on a journey to Mars or beyond. Musk said the goal is to make Starship reusable and bring down the price to a few million dollars per flight.
"In the long run - meaning, I don't know, two or three years - we should achieve full and rapid reusability," he said.
The eventual objective is to establish bases on the Moon and Mars and put humans on the "path to being a multi-planet civilization," Musk continued. "We are at this brief moment in civilization where it is possible to become a multi-planet species. That's our goal. I think we've got a chance."
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