SpaceX’s latest Mars rocket Starship exploded on return landing yesterday following a test flight on Wednesday. There was no one aboard.
The prototype “Starship” had only been launched minutes before at the company’s Texas facility. The events were caught on live video.
The 16-story-tall prototype was designed to launch a heavy-lift vehicle which is being developed by SpaceX to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on possible missions to the moon and Mars.
The self-guided rocket’s test flight had been intended to reach 41,000 feet, propelled for the first time by three of SpaceX’s newly-developed Raptor engines, but it blew up as it touched down on a landing pad following a controlled descent.
SpaceX head Elon Musk tweeted immediately after the accident saying the “fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high.”
But he added with congratulations, SpaceX got all the data they needed.