A prototype of SpaceX’s upcoming heavy-lift rocket, Starship, exploded on Friday during ground tests in south Texas as Elon Musk’s space company pursued an aggressive development schedule to fly the launch vehicle for the first time.
The explosion was unrelated to SpaceX’s planned launch this weekend of two NASA astronauts from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center using a different rocket system, the Falcon 9 with the Crew Dragon capsule fixed on top.
A prototype vanished in an explosive fireball at SpaceX’s Boca Chica test site on Friday, as seen in a livestream recorded by the Web site NASA Spaceflight.
Photo: Labpadre / YouTube / Reuters
There was no immediate indication of injuries.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Starship, a rocket standing 120m tall, is designed to carry humans and cargo to the moon and Mars. It is the space company’s planned next-generation fully reusable launch vehicle, the center of Musk’s ambitions to make human space travel affordable.
The south Texas facility sits beside a small neighborhood that SpaceX has been trying to buy for testing space, but some residents have pushed back on the company’s offers and have accused Musk’s attorneys of unrealistically low property appraisals.
At Cape Canaveral in Florida, SpaceX was set for a repeat attempt at launching Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken for a mission that would mark the first spaceflight of NASA astronauts from US soil in nine years.
The mission’s first launch try on Wednesday was called off with less than 17 minutes remaining on the countdown due to stormy weather around the Kennedy Space Center.
The forecast for yesterday was likewise precarious. Mission managers planned to make an earlier decision on weather hazards in a bid to avoid unnecessarily wearing out the crew with another suit-up and full day of launch preparations.
“Back-to-back wet dress rehearsals” disrupt the astronauts’ sleep cycles, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told a news conference on Friday.
Barring weather or other unforeseen problems, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was due to lift off at 3:22pm — after press time last night — on a 19-hour ride to the International Space Station.
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