SpaceX's Starship explodes before 10th test flight.

SpaceX's newest Starship vehicle just went up in smoke.

The company was testing a Starship upper stage at its Starbase site in South Texas on Wednesday night (June 18), to prepare for the megarocket's upcoming 10th flight test.

But something went very wrong, the vehicle exploded, sending a massive fireball high into the dark Texas skies.

SpaceX acknowledged the incident in an X post early on Thursday morning (June 19), noting that it occurred around 11 p.m. local time (midnight EDT and 0400 GMT on June 19).

SpaceX is developing Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, to help humanity colonize Mars, among other ambitious exploration tasks.

The vehicle consists of two elements, both of which are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable — a first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship, or simply Ship.

Source: www.space.com

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