SpaceX Starship spacecraft explodes during test flight

Elon Musk’s space company was conducting the seventh flight of its Starship rocket when the mishap occurred.

An uncrewed vehicle operated by SpaceX exploded during a test flight on Thursday, sending what appeared to be pieces of it streaking across the sky.

SpaceX launched its Starship rocket from a company site in Texas a little after 5.30pm ET, the company’s seventh mission of a powerful but still experimental vehicle that consists of a booster that propels a spacecraft stacked on top.

The spacecraft separated from the booster shortly after lift-off, as designed, but soon thereafter exploded, according to a livestream of the mission provided by SpaceX.

It came after Jeff Bezos’ space company launched its massive new rocket for the first time, aiming to advance the Amazon founder’s lifelong space-exploration ambitions.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket blasted off Thursday from a launchpad near Cape Canaveral, Fla., with flames pouring out from its booster.

Lift-off marked a years-in-the-making milestone for Bezos and a step toward catching up to rival space entrepreneur Elon Musk.

“All of the things we want to do in the future rely on New Glenn,” Bezos said in a recent interview.

The launch, initially scheduled earlier this month, had been postponed several times. On Monday, the company called off a launch attempt because ice built up on a power-unit component.

But on Thursday, New Glenn had a smooth countdown to lift-off, which happened just after 2am ET.

Commentators on the company’s livestream said the rocket’s upper stage – carrying test systems for a Blue Origin spacecraft – made it to orbit, the mission’s main objective.

The rocket booster, however, wasn’t able to land on a remotely controlled ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Bezos has emphasised the importance of reusing launch equipment to cut costs to get to space.

Blue Origin will need to carry out an investigation into the booster loss and present findings about what happened to the Federal Aviation Administration before it can fly another New Glenn mission, a spokesman for the agency said.

The FAA often requires such reviews after things go wrong with space operations it licenses, to ensure public safety.

A spokesman for Blue Origin said the company is working closely with the FAA and will submit initial findings within 24 hours.

The New Glenn rocket on its way to orbit. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

Following the mission, Bezos posted videos of the launch on X and thanked well-wishers. Among those well-wishers was Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, who congratulated Bezos and Blue Origin for New Glenn reaching orbit on its first attempt.

New Glenn could fly as often as six to eight times this year, according to Dave Limp, the former Amazon executive Bezos hired in 2023 as Blue Origin’s chief executive.

New Glenn measures more than 320 feet tall. It is designed to conduct regular flights using reusable boosters, lofting commercial and national-security satellites into orbit. The rocket is eventually meant to launch astronaut crews.

It is also years behind schedule due to technical and production setbacks. Bezos said he believes Blue Origin can move faster in the future, as the company pushes to improve the vehicle and steps up manufacturing.

Bezos has said his passion for space exploration was sparked in 1969, when as a 5-year-old he watched NASA land astronauts on the moon. In high school, he talked about being a “space entrepreneur”.

He founded Blue Origin in 2000, six years after starting Amazon, which became a global technology powerhouse and helped him amass one of the world’s biggest fortunes.

Since its founding, Blue Origin has created a smaller rocket for short tourism and research trips to space.

The company has worked on building a space station and developed other technologies, such as using moon dust to create solar cells. It employs about 11,000 people with operations in Washington, Texas and Alabama.

What Blue Origin hadn’t done before Thursday is send up its own rocket on an orbital mission, which is critical to competing for more business.

It would also support Bezos’ long-term space goals, which include seeing humanity spread out across the solar system.

Brent Sherwood, a former Blue Origin senior vice president, said the success of the New Glenn program is fundamental to pursuing those big objectives.

“Until you can launch a lot of stuff into orbit and until, in today’s world, you’re reusing the boosters, you haven’t met the price of admission,” he said.

Launching New Glenn will help Blue Origin try to catch up with Musk’s SpaceX.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was among the well-wishers congratulating Bezos and Blue Origin for New Glenn reaching orbit on its first attempt. Picture: AFP

Though Blue Origin was founded two years before SpaceX, Musk’s company has raced ahead to become the world’s dominant rocket launcher, breaking new ground by flying reusable boosters at record rates.

“There’s room for lots of winners,” Bezos said. “SpaceX is going to be successful, Blue Origin is going to be successful and there’s some company out there right now that hasn’t even been founded yet that is also going to be successful.”

SpaceX has embraced failing quickly during rocket development to gain data and experience to help the company gradually improve. Early Wednesday, SpaceX launched a lunar lander created by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace and a lander from ispace, a Japanese space company, to the moon.

Musk’s space company on Thursday conducted the seventh test launch of its massive Starship rocket. SpaceX again caught the vehicle’s booster back at a launchpad in Texas, but the Starship spacecraft didn’t work as designed, and that part of the rocket was lost, according to the company’s livestream.

Similar to other test flights, the Starship spacecraft was supposed to fly through space and splash down in the Indian Ocean.

Blue Origin eventually aims to carry national-security satellites on New Glenn, and its first flight serves as a so-called certification mission for the Pentagon. Gaining certification would clear the rocket for military launches.

In 2023, NASA awarded Blue Origin a contract to develop a lander to transport astronauts to the moon’s surface on an exploration mission. That operation would also start with New Glenn.

Current and former officials in the federal government have said they want New Glenn to start regularly flying, in part because it would help reduce government dependence on SpaceX’s rockets.

-Wall Street Journal