Musk's Starship explodes minutes after test flight's liftoff

BOCA CHICA, Texas, (Reuters) - An uncrewed test flight of SpaceX's next-generation Starship spacecraft exploded minutes after liftoff from South Texas yesterday, cutting short a key step in Elon Musk's development of a rocket vessel to eventually take humans to the moon and Mars.

The test flight was the first for Starship mounted atop the company's new Super Heavy rocket booster, which SpaceX has touted as the world's most powerful.

Even though the two-stage rocket ship failed to make it beyond an altitude of 23 miles (37 km), the flight achieved a primary objective of getting the new spacecraft off the ground in an otherwise seemingly clean liftoff.

While SpaceX officials were heartened by the outcome, the mission fell short of reaching several of its objectives.

The plan was to deploy Starship into space and have it reenter Earth's atmosphere 60 miles (97 km) off a Hawaiian coast before plunging into the Pacific. But the explosion cut the mission short.

Musk, SpaceX's founder, chief executive and chief engineer, had appeared eager to temper expectations in remarks made Sunday that downplayed the odds of a successful first flight. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told a conference in February that the "real goal" of the test "is to not blow up the launch pad."

Getting the newly combined Starship and booster rocket off the ground for the first time represented a milestone in SpaceX's ambition of sending astronauts back to the moon and ultimately to Mars, as a major partner in Artemis, NASA's newly inaugurated human spaceflight program.

"Congrats to @SpaceX on Starship’s first integrated flight test!," NASA chief Bill Nelson said in a tweet. "Every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward. Looking forward to all that SpaceX learns, to the next flight test — and beyond."

The two-stage rocket ship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 meters) high, blasted off from the company's Starbase spaceport east of Brownsville, Texas. SpaceX hoped, at best, to pull off a 90-minute debut flight into space but just shy of Earth orbit.

A live SpaceX webcast showed the rocket ship rising from the Gulf Coast launch tower into the morning sky over the southern tip of Texas as the Super Heavy's Raptor engines roared to life in a ball of flame and billowing clouds of exhaust and water vapor.

But less than four minutes into the flight, the upperstage Starship failed to separate as designed from the lower-stage Super Heavy, and the combined vehicle was seen tumbling end over end before exploding.

The spacecraft reached a peak altitude of 23 miles (37 km) before its fiery disintegration.

It was not immediately clear whether the explosion was caused by the spacecraft's automated flight-termination system, which is triggered onboard when the rocket begins to show signs of failure.

Nevertheless, SpaceX officials on the webcast hailed the feat of getting the Starship and booster rocket off the launch pad for the first time, declaring the brief episode in that sense to be a successful test flight.