SpaceX's Latest Starship Explosion Marks Two Consecutive Failures

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SpaceX's Starship launcher spun out of control minutes after liftoff Thursday, showering fiery debris over the Bahamas and dealing another setback to Elon Musk's rocket program after a failure under similar circumstances less than two months ago.

Starship and its Super Heavy booster, loaded with millions of pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellants, lumbered off their launchpad in Texas at 5:30 pm Central time to begin the eighth full-scale test flight of SpaceX's new-generation rocket. Thirty-three Raptor engines propelled the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) rocket through a clear afternoon sky with more than twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket, the workhorse of the Apollo lunar program.

Repeating a feat SpaceX accomplished with Starship twice before, the rocket's Super Heavy booster separated from the Starship upper stage roughly two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, then guided itself back to the Texas coastline for a catch by mechanical arms on the launchpad's tower. SpaceX is now 3-for-3 with attempts to catch a Super Heavy booster back at the launch site, a sign that engineers are well on their way to mastering how to recover and reuse boosters in a similar way as they do with the smaller workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

Musk sees Starship as the interplanetary backbone for transporting cargo and people to Mars, one of his most consistent long-term goals. This, too, requires orbital refueling. Musk recently suggested SpaceX could be ready to demonstrate ship-to-ship orbital refueling in 2026, a year later than the 2025 goal NASA officials discussed in December.

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