SpaceX Starship lands upright, then explodes in latest test

SpaceX's futuristic Starship looked like it aced a touchdown Wednesday, but then exploded on the landing pad with so much force that it was hurled into the air.

The failure occurred just minutes after SpaceX declared success. Two previous test flights crash-landed in fireballs.

The full-scale prototype of Elon Musk's envisioned Mars ship soared more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) after lifting off from the southern tip of Texas on Wednesday. It descended horizontally over the Gulf of Mexico and then flipped upright just in time to land.

The shiny bullet-shaped rocketship remained intact this time at touchdown, prompting SpaceX commentator John Insprucker to declare, "third time's a charm as the saying goes" before SpaceX ended its webcast of the test.

But then the Starship exploded and was tossed in the air, before slamming down into the ground in flames.

There was no immediate comment from SpaceX on what went wrong. But Musk looked on the bright side in a tweet: "Starship 10 landed in one piece! RIP SN10, honorable discharge." He added: "SpaceX team is doing great work! One day, the true measure of success will be that Starship flights are commonplace."

Musk plans to use Starships to send people to the moon and Mars.

The last two prototypes reached a similarly high altitude in December and February, but slammed into the ground at Boca Chica, Texas, and exploded.

Leading digital supply chain financing firm, CashInvoice has announced the appointment of Govind Sankaranarayanan, founding CFO and COO at Tata Capital to their Board of Directors, as it pursues its goal of becoming a world class digital Supply Chain Finance business. Govind Sankaranarayanan, is a highly regarded financial services leader, who was the CFO at global Internet giant Tata Communications and spent a decade establishing financial services powerhouse Tata Capital. An alumnus of London Business School, IIM Bangalore and BITS Pilani, Sankaranarayananhas been a Board Director at leading organisations such as Tata Capital Housing Finance, Tata Teleservices Maharashtra, Tata Motors Drivelines VSNL International etc. He is a board member of IndiaLends, Credright and ECube Investment Advisors, among others. ,

Indian shuttlers P V Sindhu, Kidambi Srikanth and Ajay Jayaram had a good day in office as they advanced to the quarterfinals of singles competition at the Swiss Open Super 300 badminton tournament here on Thursday.

Indian mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa also progressed to the quarterfinals, continuing their recent good run in inter national badminton.

World champion P V Sindhu hardly broke any sweat, beating USA's Iris Wang 2113 21-14 in the women's singles competition, while former world no 1 Srikanth notched up a 21-10 14-21 2114 victory over world no 50 Thomas Rouxel of France and Jayaram eked out a hard-fought 21-18 17-21 21-13 against third seeded Dane Rasmus Gemke in their respective men's singles second round matches.

Satwik and Ashwini, who reached the semifinals at

Toyota Thailand Open Super 1000 in January, defeated the Indonesian combination of Rinov Rivaldy and Pitha Haningtyas Mentari 21-18 21-16 in a mixed doubles second-round match.

While second seed Sindhu meets fifth seeded Thai Busanan Ongbamrungphan next, while fourth seed Srikanth, who had won the title in 2015, will face sixth seeded Thai Kantaphon Wangcharoen and Jayaram will be up against another Thai Kunlavut Vitidsarn, seeded eighth, in the lasteight stage.

Satwik and Ashwini will meet the winner of the match between fifth-seeded

Malaysians Tan Kian Meng and Lai Pei Jing and Germany's Jones Ralfy Jansen and Kilasu Ostermeyer.

However, Sourabh Verma lost 17-21 14-21 to eighth seeded Thai Kunlavut Vitidsarn to crash out of the men's singles event.

Earlier, two-time former champion Saina Nehwal bowed out of the tournament after a hard-fought first-round loss in the women's singles opening round on Wednesday night.

The London Olympic bronze-medallist battled for 58 minutes before going down 16-21 21-17 21-23 to Phittayaporn Chaiwan of Thailand.