One in all SpaceX’s Starship rockets exploded on a check stand in Texas late on Wednesday night time, as the corporate ready for the tenth check flight of the heavy-lift rocket system.
SpaceX mentioned “all personnel are secure and accounted for” in a publish on X, and claimed there are “no hazards to residents in surrounding communities.” The corporate mentioned in a later replace on Thursday that an preliminary evaluation suggests the explosion was brought on by a failure of of a “pressurized tank generally known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped strain vessel” within the Starship’s nosecone.
The large explosion brought about harm to the world surrounding the check stand, in line with SpaceX. However the firm mentioned there aren’t any reported accidents. SpaceX was getting ready to carry out a “static hearth” of the Starship’s six Raptor engines, and so the world across the rocket had been cleared previous to the explosion.
It’s not instantly clear what affect this may have on SpaceX’s improvement of the Starship rocket system. A current advisory from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) steered the tenth check flight may have occurred as quickly as June 29. That may most certainly be delayed as the corporate works by what went unsuitable on Wednesday night time.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk mentioned in a publish seemingly associated to the explosion that he considers it to be: “Only a scratch.”
SpaceX has spent the previous couple of years aggressively growing the 171-foot Starship and the huge 232-foot Tremendous Heavy booster that powers it into house. The corporate began 2025 saying this 12 months could be a “transformational” one for this system, and the FAA just lately elevated its restrict on Starship launches in Texas from 5 to 25.
However Starship, specifically, has had numerous issues this 12 months. The rocket unexpectedly exploded throughout its seventh check flight in January, after which once more in March. It failed once more throughout its ninth check in Could.
Whereas the rocket made it additional into its most up-to-date flight in Could than in the course of the earlier two exams, 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 Could. The corporate can also be growing a bigger “Model 3” of Starship that, Musk claimed, may fly as early as this 12 months.
This story has been up to date with new data from SpaceX about what it believes to be the reason for the explosion.
