Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship explodes during largest ever rocket launch in history
Ali Condon
Featured Image Credit: @SpaceX/Twitter
Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship officially launched today - only to explode just seconds later.
The spacecraft is the most powerful space rocket ever developed and stands at 120-meters tall.
Although the vehicle did successfully lift off from SpaceX Starbase in Texas, it exploded quite shortly after.
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The test flight was due to last 1.5 hours before touching down in the Gulf of Mexico.
But, soon after the launch, booster rocket, Super Heavy, appeared to have failed to separate as planned. As a result, the two exploded, rather dramatically, in the sky.
Despite that, the launch is being described as a success by SpaceX, in true Elon style.
Commenting on the launch - and the subsequent explosion - a thread from Space X read: "As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation.
"Teams will continue to review data and work toward our next flight test.
"With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary
"Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting first integrated flight test of Starship!"
Starship is the vehicle that SpaceX plans to eventually use to send people and cargo to the moon and one day Mars, marking the beginnings of space tourism.
Though, it looks like they still have quite a lot of work to do before anyone will be willing to climb onboard.
The explosion comes just days after the rocket's planned launch was scrapped at the last minute.
The original lift off had been scheduled for Monday (17 April) but, just minutes before lift-off, Elon announced that it would have to be postponed due to a frozen valve.
"A pressurant valve appears to be frozen, so unless it starts operating soon, no launch today," the Twitter CEO tweeted.
He added that the SpaceX team had 'learnt a lot' and would 'retry in a few days.'
In fairness, before the explosion, Elon Musk had warned that there was a good chance things could go wrong.
"I guess I would just like to set expectations... low," he said on Twitter Space just a few hours before the originally scheduled launch.
He noted that, if the rocket did successfully launch, there was a good chance it would explode rather than make its full trip.
So, at least he saw it coming?