SpaceX's most powerful spacecraft Starship launched toward space for the first time ever on Thursday, from the company's Starbase facility in South Texas. However in under 4 minutes after liftoff and at an altitude of about 24 miles, when the spaceship's first-stage booster didn't separate, Starship ended its mission with a bang, sending pieces of the stainless-steel craft raining into the Gulf of Mexico.
Apparently, the spacecraft's first-stage booster, Super Heavy, didn't fire on all cylinders during the launch. Three of its 33 Raptors apparently didn't light up at liftoff, and two more conked out during the brief flight.
"As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation," SpaceX tweeted after the incident.
The company wasn't expecting full success on the debut space launch, and it cheered the boxes that Starship managed to check. The giant rocket-spaceship combo cleared Starbase's launch tower, and survived Max-Q, the point during launch when the stresses are highest on a vehicle.
"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," the rocket company added in another tweet.
We should learn more details soon, about Thursday's explosive incident when engineers and scientists at SpaceX release their findings.
SpaceX owner and CEO Elon Musk tweeted: "Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months."
NASA administrator Bill Nelson also hailed the launch. "Congrats to @SpaceX on Starship’s first integrated flight test!" he tweeted. "Every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward. Looking forward to all that SpaceX learns, to the next flight test—and beyond."
WATCH Starship's 'explosive' test flight