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Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship experienced another dramatic failure on Tuesday evening when its latest test launch from Texas ended in a rocket explosion.
This marks the third major setback for the colossal 400-foot rocket, following similar explosions in January and March.
The unmanned Starship successfully launched into sub-orbit from its Starbase in Texas at 6:36 PM local time. However, the flight encountered issues approximately 30 minutes after launch when the rocket door failed to fully open, preventing the deployment of its payload of eight mock Starlink satellites.
Fuel leaks within the Starship’s fuel tank systems caused the rocket to spin uncontrollably before its intended re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
SpaceX confirmed the rocket broke apart during re-entry, terming it – somewhat euphemistically – a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”. A company spokesperson added: “Teams will continue to review data and work towards our next flight test”.
SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot noted on the company’s live stream: “We are in a little bit of a spin. We did spring a leak in some of the fuel tank systems inside of Starship”.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed they were “aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX Starship Flight 9 mission” and are actively investigating with SpaceX, reporting no public injury or property damage.
Despite the failures, Musk remained optimistic, stating on X (formerly Twitter) that “Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight! Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent”.
He also vowed to increase Starship launches to approximately one every three to four weeks. SpaceX maintained a positive stance, posting on X that “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary”.
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