SpaceX's Starship rocket explodes during preparations for 10th flight

Thomson Reuters

· Posted: Jun 19, 2025 10:59 AM EDT | Last Updated: June 19

SpaceX's Starship spacecraft exploded into a melodramatic fireball during investigating successful Texas precocious connected Wednesday, the latest successful a bid of setbacks for billionaire Elon Musk's Mars rocket program.

The detonation occurred astir 11 p.m. section clip arsenic Starship was connected a trial basal astatine Starbase, Texas, portion preparing for the tenth trial flight, SpaceX said successful a station connected Musk's societal media level X.

The institution attributed it to a "major anomaly," and said each unit was safe.

"Preliminary information suggests that a nitrogen COPV successful the payload bay failed beneath its impervious pressure," Musk said successful a station connected X, successful a notation to a nitrogen state retention portion known arsenic a composite overwrapped unit vessel.

"If further probe confirms that this is what happened, it is the archetypal clip ever for this design," he continued.

SpaceX didn't instantly respond to a petition for further comment. The Starship rocket appeared to acquisition astatine slightest 2 explosions successful speedy succession, lighting up the nighttime entity and sending debris flying, according to video capturing the infinitesimal it exploded.

The 122-metre Starship rocket strategy is astatine the halfway of Musk's extremity of sending humans to Mars. But it has been beset by a drawstring of failures this year.

Previous explosions

In precocious May, SpaceX's Starship rocket spun retired of power astir halfway done a formation without achieving immoderate of its astir important investigating goals.

Starship had lifted disconnected from SpaceX's Starbase, Texas, motorboat site, flying beyond the constituent of 2 erstwhile explosive attempts earlier this twelvemonth that sent debris streaking implicit Caribbean islands and forced dozens of airliners to divert course.

Two months earlier, the spacecraft exploded successful abstraction minutes aft lifting disconnected from Texas, prompting the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to halt aerial postulation successful parts of Florida.

Videos connected societal media showed fiery debris streaking done the dusk skies adjacent southbound Florida and the Bahamas aft Starship broke up successful abstraction soon aft it began to rotation uncontrollably with its engines chopped off, a SpaceX unrecorded watercourse of the ngo showed. Musk called that detonation "a insignificant setback."

The FAA said earlier this period that it had closed an agency-required probe into the mishap, citing the probable origin arsenic a hardware nonaccomplishment successful 1 of the engines. SpaceX identified 8 corrective actions to forestall a recurrence, and the FAA said it verified that SpaceX implemented those anterior to the late-May Starship mission.

In January, a Starship rocket broke up successful abstraction minutes aft launching from Texas, raining debris implicit Caribbean islands and causing insignificant harm to a car successful the Turks and Caicos Islands.