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SpaceX’s prototype Starship rocket exploded during a return landing attempt, minutes after a seemingly uneventful test liftoff from the company’s launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
The destroyed Starship rocket was a 16-story-tall prototype for a heavy-lift launch vehicle being developed by Elon Musk’s private space company to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on future missions to the Moon and Mars.
The launch was made by SpaceX on a YouTube live stream.
The self-guided unmanned rocket exploded when it landed on a landing pad after a controlled descent.
The test flight was intended to reach an altitude of 12,500 meters powered by three of SpaceX’s recently developed Raptor engines for the first time.
Elon Musk said in a tweet immediately after the crash that the “pressure in the rocket’s fuel head tank was low” during the descent, “causing the landing speed to be high.”
He added that SpaceX had obtained “all the data we needed” from the test.
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