SpaceX’s starship rocket explodes during the preparation of 10th flight

SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft exploded in a dramatic fireball during a test in Texas at the end of Wednesday, the latest in a series of failures for billionaire Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.

The explosion occurred around 11 am local time as the starship was at a test stand in Texas’s Starbase, while preparing the tenth Test flight, SpaceX said in a post on Musk’s social media platform X.

The company blamed it for the “major discrepancy” and said that all the workers were safe.

“Initial data suggests that a nitrogen COPV in the payload bay failed below its proof pressure,” Musk said in a post on the X, in the context of a nitrogen gas storage unit known as a composite overwide pressure vessel.

“If further investigation confirms that this has happened, this is the first time for this design,” he continued.

SpaceX did not respond to the request for further further comments. The Starship rocket experienced at least two explosions in quick succession, illuminating the night sky and flying the rubble, according to the video, capturing the moment that exploded.

The 122-meter starship rocket system is at the origin of Musk’s goal to send humans to Mars. But this year is surrounded by a string of failures.

Previous explosion

In late May, SpaceX’s starship rockets exit from control of about half the path through a flight without achieving some of their most important test goals.

Starships had removed from SpaceX’s Starbase, Texas, launch site, flying beyond two previous explosive attempts earlier this year, which forgot the debris on the Caribbean Islands and forced dozens of airlines to do divert courses.

Two months ago, the spacecraft exploded at the spacecraft after lifting from Texas, inspiring the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to prevent air traffic in parts of Florida.

Social media videos shown fierce debris through the evening sky near South Florida and broke into space after StarShip after Bahmas, as it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, showing a spacex live stream of the mission. Musk called that explosion “a minor blow”.

The FAA said earlier this month that it had closed an agency-urgent investigation into an accident, citing a possible cause as a hardware failure in one of the engines. SpaceX identified eight corrective tasks to prevent recurrence, and the FAA stated that it was verified that SpaceX had implemented those before the late-May Starship Mission.

In January, the space minutes broke a starship rocket in space after launching from Texas, wrecking of debris on the Caribbean Islands and a car in the Turks and Caicos Islands suffered minor damage.