SpaceX's Starship as it becomes a fireball Wednesday night in Starbase, Texas. Screenshot NASASpaceflight [{ "name": "Inline Story Links", "component": "11821434", "insertPoint": "4th", "startingPoint": 3, "requiredCountToDisplay": "3", "maxInsertions": 5 },{ "name": "Real 1 Player (r2) - Inline", "insertPoint": "8", "component": "11793092", "requiredCountToDisplay": "10" },{ "name": "Air - Ad - Inline Results - 2", "insertPoint": "1/2", "component": "11343090", "requiredCountToDisplay": "10" },{ "name": "Air - Ad - Inline Results - 3", "insertPoint": "12", "component": "11679812", "requiredCountToDisplay": "16" }] Welp, SpaceX has done it again. That’s right, a brand-new version of Starship, the world’s largest rocket, exploded in a blinding fireball on Wednesday night at the Elon Musk-led company’s launch site in the recently incorporated town of Starbase, on the lip of the South Texas Coast. The upper stage of the rocket, known as Starship or just Ship, was strapped to a test stand and set to undergo its second static fire test — a prelaunch test where the rocket’s engines are fired while the rocket stays bolted to the ground – when it “experienced a major anomaly.” The first explosion, an enormous fireball of blinding white light, triggered at least two smaller explosions, with plumes of gold and copper flame and billowing clouds of smoke, as a livestream from NASASpaceflight, a space media company that has cameras on SpaceX’s South Texas launch site, depicted. A smaller fire was burning in the explosion’s wake. Despite the sheer size and scope of the explosion, Cameron County officials stated via social media that no injuries had been reported, noting that an investigation was underway. SpaceX acknowledged the explosion on social media early Thursday morning. “A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for,” the company stated on social media. They went on to note that there was no danger to residents in surrounding communities, although they did ask that people stay away until officials were certain the area was safe. Later in the day, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (recently head of the Department of Government Efficiency, and more recently still caught up in a very public spat with President Donald Trump that saw Trump threatening to cut all of SpaceX’s government contracts) stated on X that early analysis indicated that a storage container holding pressurized nitrogen had suddenly failed, triggering the explosion. “If further investigation confirms that this is what happened, it is the first time ever for this design,” he continued. Overall, it’s another bad sign for Starship. The 403-foot-tall rocket is key to Musk’s long-held dream of getting to Mars, but, well, the rocket keeps blowing up during test flights. In fact, the upper stage of the rocket exploded in the seventh test flight in January and the eighth test flight in March, scattering debris over Turks and Caicos on both occasions. Last month, Starship’s ninth test was even more of a clunker with its first stage Super Heavy booster blowing up instead of splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico. Then the upper stage exploded as well, littering the Indian Ocean with rocket pieces, a development that led to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration demanding that SpaceX launch an investigation before attempting another launch. But it’s unlikely any of these setbacks are going to slow Musk and SpaceX down or see fewer test flights of Starship attempting to go up from the Texas Gulf Coast. After all, last month the FAA also lifted SpaceX’s test flight limit from five a year to 25 a year, dismissing concerns that such an increase will harm the environment. (As we’ve noted before, SpaceX’s launch site is smack in the middle of sensitive wetlands that are home to endangered species including piping plovers, ocelots and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, a point of concern for environmentalists since the site was first conceived.) Now, it remains to be seen when Starship’s tenth launch will occur. SpaceX was still in the process of investigating, with FAA oversight, what went wrong during last month’s test flight, so the company didn’t even have a target launch date, despite all their pre-launch prep work. ') let lineHeight = jQuery('[line-height-check]').get(0).clientHeight; jQuery('[line-height-check]').remove() if (jQuery(element).prop('tagName').match(/HIDDEN/i) !== null) { jQuery(element).children('div').last().css({ marginBottom: `${lineHeight*2}px` }); } else { jQuery(element).css({ marginTop: `${lineHeight*2}px`, marginBottom: `${lineHeight}px` }); } // const insertionBlockClass = `fdn-paragraph-insertion-block`; const styleElementHook = `fdn-paragraph-insertion-styles`; jQuery(element).addClass(insertionBlockClass); if (jQuery(`[${styleElementHook}]`).length === 0) { jQuery('div.fdn-content-body, div #storyBody').append('