Friday morning’s failure was less energetic than the explosion that occurred in Starship’s upper stage during testing at Massey in June. The incident caused extensive damage to the test site and the vehicle was completely destroyed. The problem with Booster 18 on Friday caused little damage to the test infrastructure, and no Raptor engines had yet been installed on the vehicle.
Still, this is the point in the rocket development program at which SpaceX sought to accelerate Starship development and reach a healthy flight cadence in 2026. Many of the company’s near-term goals depend on getting Starship flying regularly and reliably.
A full view of the catastrophic damage to Super Heavy Booster 18 during tonight’s test. The entire LOX tank section suffered significant damage.
11/21/25 pic.twitter.com/Kw8XeZ2qXW
– Starship Gazer (@StarshipGazer) 21 November 2025
With this advanced vehicle SpaceX wants to demonstrate booster landing and reuse, an upper stage tower catch, the beginning of an operational Starlink deployment mission next year, and a test campaign for NASA’s Artemis program. To keep this moon landing program on track, it is important that SpaceX and NASA conduct in-orbit refueling tests of Starship, which was nominally scheduled for the second half of 2026.
The company’s goal on this timeline was to conduct a crewed lunar landing for NASA during the second half of 2028. From an outside perspective, before this most recent failure, that timeline already looked quite optimistic.
One of the main features of SpaceX is that it quickly diagnoses the failure, resolves the problems, and gets back to flying as quickly as possible. No doubt its engineers are already considering the data they received on Friday morning, and may have even diagnosed the problem. The company is flexible and has ample resources.
Nevertheless, it is also a mature program. The Starship vehicle was first launched in 2023 and its first stage made a successful flight two years ago. Losing the first stage of the latest generation of the vehicle, during the early stages of testing, can only be seen as a significant blow to a program with so much promise and so much to accomplish so quickly.