SpaceX has confirmed that the first stage of its third-gen Super Heavy booster, the two-stage Starship system, suffered a type of explosive gas failure during testing Thursday morning. In a post on X, the aerospace company said, “Booster 18 encountered an anomaly during the gas system pressure test we were conducting prior to structural proof testing.”
There was no propellant inside the booster as the engines were not installed at that time. No injuries were reported and the company shared that personnel are always kept at a safe distance during these types of tests. The company said it would “need time to investigate before being confident about the cause.”
It looks like an explosive leak of gas, or whatever it was, blew off part of the lower half of the booster. Content creators from SpaceX show it in detail. Clips from the show show the incident happening around 4 am on Friday morning.
The booster is part of the third generation of Starship, SpaceX’s massive and fully reusable rocket designed for high payload capacity. The ship weighs 5,000 tons and is 400 feet tall (more than a 30-story building).
To date, Starship has conducted 11 successful launches at a cost of more than $100 million per launch, and five. Although this most recent eruption was fairly benign, fiery debris was still seen raining from the sky. SpaceX’s ultimate plan for Starship is to deliver payloads to the Moon and Mars. Most recently, the last iteration of the second generation Starship took place in October. This comes after it first appeared in August.
86 percent of global payload mass is scheduled to be sent into space by 2024, although companies are investing heavily to compete. According to , the cost per kilogram of launching into space has seen a 95 percent reduction compared to the shuttle days. The SpaceX Falcon 9 costs 20 times less per kilogram to launch than NASA’s space shuttle.