On its first test flight Thursday morning, SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket cleared the launch pad, soared into the south Texas sky, but ultimately exploded into a trail of smoke.
The rocket — currently the most powerful in the world — lifted off from the company’s launch site near Boca Chica, Texas, around 6:33 a.m. Pacific time. After passing through the moment of peak mechanical stress on the rocket, the Super Heavy first-stage booster was set to separate from the Starship spacecraft.
But instead of separating, the still-conjoined rocket tumbled head over head before it ultimately exploded.
Stacked together, the two-part rocket stands nearly 400-feet tall and can carry more than 220,000 pounds. It has about twice the thrust of the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket that ferried astronauts to the moon.
Starship is key to the future of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, as well as U.S. human space exploration.
Although SpaceX built its reputation and manifest on the smaller Falcon 9 rocket, the company needs to expand its business beyond launches. That’s where Starship comes in.
The Hawthorne, California, company has already launched thousands of small satellites as part of its Starlink broadband internet constellation and offers service to the U.S. and countries around the globe. But those initial, smaller satellites are not advanced enough to fully implement SpaceX’s goal of being a major player in the broadband market.
SpaceX plans to launch more capable versions of the Starlink satellites that are larger and would require many more launches if flown on a Falcon 9 rocket. But with Starship’s carrying capacity, the company would be able to launch more satellites at a time, allowing SpaceX to build its broadband capacity faster and serve more customers.
Starlink is an important part of SpaceX’s plans for generating revenue. Musk told reporters in 2019 that revenue from providing internet service could total $30 billion a year, while launch revenue would top out at about $3 billion a year.
That kind of money is important for Musk’s ultimate goal — launching humans to Mars, which also requires Starship to ferry travelers to the red planet.
In the meantime, Starship already has missions closer to home on its docket. The rocket has been bought out by several billionaires for private spaceflights, including one intended to circle the moon that’s funded by Japanese fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa.
SpaceX is also under contract with NASA to develop Starship as a lunar lander for the Artemis moon program.
The company has tried to set expectations low for this first test flight. SpaceX representatives said on an earlier launch webcast that the primary objective is to gather as much data as possible about the Starship spacecraft, the Super Heavy rocket booster and its ground systems to further its development.
The company first started testing Starship’s components in earnest in 2019, when the company launched its short, stubby prototype, Starhopper, on brief, upward trajectories into the air. SpaceX then progressed to launch and landing tests of the Starship spacecraft, a static fire test of the Super Heavy rocket booster and other simulations.
