One of SpaceX’s launch vehicles exploded on a test stand in Texas late Wednesday night, as the company prepared for the tenth test flight of the heavy lift rocket system.
SpaceX said “all employees are safe and taken into account” in Post on Xand asserted that there are “no dangers for residents in surrounding communities.” The company did not give an explanation for the explosion.
It is not immediately clear what effect this will have on the SpaceX development of the Starship rocket system. Recent counseling By the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suggested that the tenth test flight could have occurred immediately after June 29th.
Elon Musk, Director General of Spacex In a poster seemingly related To the blast that he considers it: “Just a trifle.”
SpaceX has spent the last years aggressively developing the 171-foot starship and the massive 232-foot overweight accelerator that power it into space. The company started 2025 saying This year would be “transformative” for the program, and the FAA recently Increased its limit to Starship launches in Texas from 5 to 25.
But Starship especially had many problems this year. The rocket unexpectedly exploded during his seventh test flight in Januaryand then Again in March. It failed again during its Ninth Test in May.
While the rocket made it further on its most recent flight in May than during the previous two attempts, it still failed to deploy the Dummy Starlink satellites, which it carried on board a core step in the company’s plan to use the mega-rocket to grow its space-based online service.
Musk maintained that SpaceX is on the way to try to send a starship to Mars in 2026, giving it a “50/50” chance In company update in May. The company also develops a larger “version 3” of Starship, which, Musk claimed, could fly as early as this year.
