One in all SpaceX’s Starship launch autos exploded on a take a look at stand in Texas late on Wednesday evening, as the corporate ready for the tenth take a look at 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 didn’t present a proof for the explosion.
It’s not instantly clear what influence this can have on SpaceX’s improvement of the Starship rocket system. A current advisory from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) urged the tenth take a look at flight might have occurred as quickly as June 29.
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 large 232-foot Tremendous Heavy booster that powers it into area. The corporate began 2025 saying this yr can be a “transformational” one for this system, and the FAA lately elevated its restrict on Starship launches in Texas from 5 to 25.
However Starship, particularly, has had plenty of issues this yr. The rocket unexpectedly exploded throughout its seventh take a look at flight in January, after which once more in March. It failed once more throughout its ninth take a look at in Might.
Whereas the rocket made it additional into its most up-to-date flight in Might than in the course of the earlier two exams, it nonetheless didn’t 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 monitor to attempt to ship a Starship to Mars in 2026, giving it a “50/50” probability in an organization replace in Might. The corporate can be growing a bigger “Model 3” of Starship that, Musk claimed, might fly as early as this yr.
