SpaceX's Starship successfully blasted off on its first full test flight, but the giant interplanetary spacecraft exploded less than five minutes in.
In what was meant to herald a new era for the space industry, the uncrewed rocket completed the first-ever launch in its 119-metre 'fully stacked' configuration, where the Starship upper stage sits atop the Super Heavy booster's 31 engines, making it taller than the Statue of Liberty
But the planned separation of the two sections failed to separate as planned, started to fall back to Earth much earlier than expected and then exploded four minutes after liftoff.
"Obviously this does not appear to be a nominal situation," a company commentator said during the company's live coverage
Or in the company's words shortly after, Starship "experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation".
SpaceX boss Elon Musk later said the company "learned a lot for next test launch in a few months".
Starship didn’t separate as planned, started tumbling and was lost at 4mins after liftoff. Not yet clear if explosion was a manual termination command, since the rocket was showing signs of failure pic.twitter.com/OFtvNIs6Rj
— Joey Roulette (@joroulette) April 20, 2023
Technical issues had forced a delay from the planned launch at the start of the week for a rocket that is designed to carry cargo and passengers into Earth orbit, to the moon and, hopes founder Elon Musk, Mars.
It launched just after 8.30am US central time on 20 April (aka 4/20, one of Musk's favourite numbers).
Liftoff of Starship! pic.twitter.com/4t8mRP37Gp
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023
Starship has more than double the thrust of any previous rocket launched from Earth and is intended to eventually be fully reusable, to facilitate frequent flights to orbit for human passengers and up to 150 tonnes of satellite cargo into low-Earth orbit, which could further transform the space industry.
Today's launch, however, was not scheduled to complete a full orbital flight, with SpaceX having planned for both vehicles to splashdown and be "expended".
In the future, it will attempt the sort of vertical landing of which its Falcon 9 rockets are capable, and has a massive device to catching the Super Heavy booster.
A video livestream from the company shows the flight test in full.
** UPDATE: Adds details **