By Chris Zappone
A large SpaceX rocket segment exploded on a test platform in south Texas on Wednesday night (Thursday morning AEST), sending a massive fireball high into the sky.
It marked the fourth consecutive failure of a Starship rocket, which is designed to realise founder Elon Musk’s dream of humanity colonising Mars.
SpaceX said the Starship “experienced a major anomaly” at about 11pm local time (8am AEST) on a test stand. It was preparing for flight test at Starbase, the small town that Musk is using as a base for his operations at the southern tip of Texas.
“A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for,” SpaceX said in a statement on the social platform X.
SpaceX said there were no hazards to nearby communities, although previous failures of Musk’s rockets have rained debris and fuel down onto surrounding land in the past.
The explosion occurred as the rocket engine was being tested. A prototype Starship disintegrated over the Indian Ocean in May. Since 2023, five of nine launches of the super-heavy rocket have failed. The explosion on Thursday (AEST) was not a launch.
Musk left the White House, where he had been US President Donald Trump’s special government employee, at the end of May. It came after Musk poured $US130 million into the Trump 2024 campaign.
While decamped at the White House, amid much controversy, Musk championed the department of government efficiency, his brainchild effort to radically cut government spending and reduce the size of the federal workforce.
Musk’s success in developing reusable rockets has structurally lowered the cost of launching into space, opening up new space-related businesses. Cheaper launch is also key to Musk’s ambitious plan to send humans to Mars to colonise the red planet.
Commenting on the Starship explosion, Dr Jason Held, CEO of Adelaide-based Saber Astronautics said: “[With] experimental flights like this, you would expect failures.”
This contrasted with the risk-averse, costly and longer-term approach linked to NASA programs, he said.
“It’s interesting that SpaceX prefers frequent failures they can learn from versus the [Space Launch System] and current NASA programs which require perfection before even a flight attempt,” Held said.
“This will artificially make SpaceX seem riskier, when the reality is that with NASA/SLS the risk is simply unknown.”
The SLS is backed by the United Launch Alliance, which includes long-time space players such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, among others.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk.Credit: Bloomberg
A 2023 SpaceX launch failure sent debris across a wide area, covering the community of Port Isabel with a brown grime, according to a report by UPI.
In 2021, an explosion of Starship’s upper stage sent debris across Brazos Island State Park and Boca Chica State Park.
In 2023, Musk predicted the chance of success of a then-coming rocket launch at around 50 per cent odds.
“If we do launch, I would consider anything that does not result in the destruction of the launch mount itself, the launch pad […] I would consider that to be a win,” he said.
Starbase, Texas, was once known as Boca Chica Village, until the community voted to approve the name change in May 2025.
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