SpaceX Starship lands on its feet and explodes in the last test

SpaceX’s futuristic Starship appeared to have hit a touchdown on Wednesday, but then exploded onto the airfield with such force that it was hurled into the air.

The failure came just minutes after SpaceX declared success. Two previous test flights had a forced fireball landing.

The full-scale prototype of the Mars spacecraft envisioned by Elon Musk flew more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) after taking off from the southern tip of Texas on Wednesday. It descended horizontally over the Gulf of Mexico and then overturned just in time to land.

The shiny bullet-shaped rocket remained intact this time on touch, prompting SpaceX commentator John Insprucker to declare, “the third time is a charm, as the saying goes” before SpaceX ended its test webcast.

But then the ship exploded and was launched into the air, before falling to the burning ground.

There was no immediate comment from SpaceX about what went wrong. But Musk saw the bright side in a tweet: “Ship 10 landed in its entirety! RIP SN10, honorable discharge.”

He added: “The SpaceX team is doing a great job! One day, the real measure of success will be that spacecraft flights are commonplace.”

Musk plans to use starships to send people to the moon and Mars.

The last two prototypes reached a similarly high altitude in December and February, but crashed into the ground in Boca Chica, Texas, and exploded.

Each of these last three test flights lasted 6 1/2 minutes.

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