The largest and most powerful rocket ever built by man exploded during a test flight Thursday morning. The flight was unmanned.
SpaceX’s Starship, which is meant to eventually take humans to the moon and to Mars, broke up four minutes after taking off from Starbase, the private SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas.
The initial liftoff of the craft was successful. However, several minutes into the flight, Starship failed to separate from its rocket boosters, causing it to explode.
One official said on the broadcast that “Starship just experienced what we call a rapid unplanned disassembly.”

SpaceX wrote on Twitter following the explosion: “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,” SpaceX said. “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.”