Elon Musk’s massive Mars rocket suffers an explosive setback

It was a case of two steps forward, one step back for SpaceX’s Starship development program today, with a dramatic explosion from a prototype of the company’s Mars-bound rocket during testing on the ground. The fiery event took place at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in Texas, and may delay its plans for the booster’s first orbital flight.

SpaceX had been making decent process with the development of its Starship, the deep-space vehicle at the heart of CEO Elon Musk’s plans to establish a human settlement on Mars. Last year, following a series of failed and explosive attempts the company finally carried out a sub-orbital flight of an upper stage Starship prototype and safely landed it thereafter. Musk said recently he had hoped for an orbital flight this month.

Today’s testing involved a version of Super Heavy, the giant first-stage booster designed to power Starship into orbit with a total of 33 SpaceX Raptor engines. A firing of these engines on the pad at Boca Chica today resulted in a heavy explosion, visibly shaking cameras recording the tests as captured by NASA Spaceflight.

“Yeah, actually not good. Team is assessing damage,” tweeted Musk in response.

Though everything around the rocket appeared to remain in tact, the booster did continue to emit thick smoke for some time after. Musk didn’t expand on the possible cause for the explosion, but did add context around the complexities of using cryogenic fuel, which is required for Super Heavy to generate the necessary degree of force.

“Cryogenic fuel is an added challenge, as it evaporates to create fuel-air explosion risk in a partially oxygen atmosphere like Earth,” he tweeted. “That said, we have a lot of sensors to detect this. More later.”

Source: Twitter (NASA Spaceflight)

It was a case of two steps forward, one step back for SpaceX’s Starship development program today, with a dramatic explosion from a prototype of the company’s Mars-bound rocket during testing on the ground. The fiery event took place at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in Texas, and may delay its plans for the booster’s first orbital flight.

SpaceX had been making decent process with the development of its Starship, the deep-space vehicle at the heart of CEO Elon Musk’s plans to establish a human settlement on Mars. Last year, following a series of failed and explosive attempts the company finally carried out a sub-orbital flight of an upper stage Starship prototype and safely landed it thereafter. Musk said recently he had hoped for an orbital flight this month.

Today’s testing involved a version of Super Heavy, the giant first-stage booster designed to power Starship into orbit with a total of 33 SpaceX Raptor engines. A firing of these engines on the pad at Boca Chica today resulted in a heavy explosion, visibly shaking cameras recording the tests as captured by NASA Spaceflight.

“Yeah, actually not good. Team is assessing damage,” tweeted Musk in response.

Though everything around the rocket appeared to remain in tact, the booster did continue to emit thick smoke for some time after. Musk didn’t expand on the possible cause for the explosion, but did add context around the complexities of using cryogenic fuel, which is required for Super Heavy to generate the necessary degree of force.

“Cryogenic fuel is an added challenge, as it evaporates to create fuel-air explosion risk in a partially oxygen atmosphere like Earth,” he tweeted. “That said, we have a lot of sensors to detect this. More later.”

Source: Twitter (NASA Spaceflight)