Considered one of SpaceX’s Starship launch autos exploded on a check stand in Texas late on Wednesday evening, as the corporate ready for the tenth check flight of the heavy-lift rocket system.
SpaceX stated “all personnel are secure and accounted for” in a put up 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 affect this can have on SpaceX’s improvement of the Starship rocket system. A latest advisory from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recommended the tenth check flight might have occurred as quickly as June 29.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stated in a put up seemingly associated to the explosion that he considers it to be: “Only a scratch.”
SpaceX has spent the previous couple of years aggressively creating the 171-foot Starship and the large 232-foot Tremendous Heavy booster that powers it into house. The corporate began 2025 saying this yr can 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, particularly, has had quite a lot of issues this yr. 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 checks, 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 observe to attempt to ship a Starship to Mars in 2026, giving it a “50/50” probability in an organization replace in Could. The corporate can also be creating a bigger “Model 3” of Starship that, Musk claimed, might fly as early as this yr.
