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 testing explosion was unrelated to SpaceX's upcoming
launch 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 website NASA Spaceflight. There was no immediate
indication of injuries. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a
request for comment.
Starship, a rocket standing 394 feet tall, is designed to
carry humans and 100 tons of 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 up 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.
SpaceX was among the three companies awarded a combined $1
billion by NASA last month to develop rocket systems capable of
ferrying cargo and humans to the moon. SpaceX proposed Starship
for the award.
The FAA granted the space company a license Thursday to
begin Starship's first suborbital flight tests, though it was
unclear when those tests would occur.