After he had managed to achieve space, the Starship rocket from SpaceX exploded in flight. A new failure for Elon Musk’s company and its ambitions for the Martian conquest.
New setbacks for SpaceX. The Megafusée -Starship, which Elon Musk’s company develops to go to Mars, managed to go into space on Tuesday, May 27, but experienced a new eventful test flight, its ship, which exploded before the planned descent on earth.
This rocket has the size of a building of around 40 floors and is the most powerful that has ever been designed. Shortly after 1 h 35 in Paris she was flown away from Texas in a colossal cloud of smoke.
During two previous attempts in January and March, the upper floor had exploded at the beginning of the flight, which led to the rain pieces of incandescent lamps over the Caribbean and minimal damage. This time the ship managed to reach space, but not to take it, as the company hoped, the satellite simulators that were wearing it. And above all, he underwent a fuel leak that made him lose control and led him to explode over the Indian ocean, where he had to end his race in a controlled manner. He underwent “quickly unpleasant disassembly,” said SpaceX on X, who employed Elon Musk’s favorite -euphemism for an explosion.
The first floor of the rocket, which the whole drive, experienced the same fate and probably exploded just before his dive in the Gulf of Mexico was programmed.
During this test, the ninth SpaceX, SpaceX had decided not to bring him back to his shooting step to catch him with mechanical arms – a spectacular maneuver that she masters alone. Instead, this greater, the first to reuse after a flight, had to carry out experiments in order to improve the performance of these devices. Elon Musk aims to use them several times in order to make his rocket completely reusable, a characteristic that would make it possible to significantly reduce costs and resources.
The raptor engines of Starships ignite during the separation of the haystop. Super Heavy increases back towards the Splashdown location and prepares for its high attack offer pic.twitter.com/aqbwsvsRL0
– SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 27, 2025
A risky strategy
The founder of SpaceX followed the flight directly from the Texas location of the Starbase company in a T-shirt that shows his motto: “Colonize Mars”. The wealthy entrepreneur counts on this megafusée to carry out his crazy project to conquer the red planet that is necessary to make people a “multiplanetary” species and offer a rescue plan if the earth becomes uninhabitable. An ambition that he had detailed on Tuesday while speaking, but which was depreciated for no reason. A modified version of the Starship must also be used for the Artémis program that provides for the return of the Americans to the moon.
These incidents are anything but unpublished, Elon Musk’s companies that focus on a risky strategy: multiple prototypes to fix the problems in flight situations. A philosophy that has made its success but is not free of criticism, especially of the environment. Associations submitted a complaint against the American authorities in 2023 and accused them of abused the effects of these starts, while the company’s space base in Texas is located near protected natural areas.
Despite this criticism, the American aviation regulator, the FAA, gave environmentally friendly light from 5 to 25 annual flights in early May. A pace that should speed up quickly.