A massive first-stage booster for an upgraded version of SpaceX’s Starship rocket suffered a failure during predawn testing in Texas Friday, potentially complicating the company’s efforts to prove the rocket’s moon-landing capabilities for NASA, according to observers who captured it on video.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Thursday deployed the upgraded stainless steel Super Heavy booster to a test platform at the company’s Starbase rocket facility, saying it intends to test its redesigned propellant systems and structural strength.
During a test on the pad around 4 a.m. CT Friday, a zoomed-in live video feed, opens in a new tab from SpaceX monitoring group LabPadre, showed the booster suddenly buckled and released a cloud of gas from its sides, indicating an explosion had blown its exterior apart.
SpaceX, in a statement, acknowledged what it called an “anomaly during gas system pressure testing” and said there were no injuries. The accident, SpaceX said, occurred before testing the booster’s structural strength.
“Teams need time to investigate before being sure of the cause,” the company said.
SpaceX had hoped to fly the booster, along with its Starship upper stage that was not involved in Friday’s test, early next year for the company’s 12th Starship flight demonstration since 2023. Friday’s accident risks jeopardizing that goal.
A spaceship at the heart of the race to the moon
The company has been under pressure from NASA to advance its Starship Whirlwind development program into a new phase of testing involving features related to the rocket’s future moon landings, a pair of multibillion-dollar missions for the U.S. space agency that would put the first humans on the lunar surface since 1972.
The mission has made Starship a central part of the U.S. lunar program, which is increasingly under pressure to achieve a landing before China around 2030. NASA’s camps of interim and potential leaders have fought over how best to return humans to the Moon while China’s space program moves forward.
The booster that suffered the accident Friday was the first of the Starship V3, an iteration of the rocket that SpaceX says contains a range of new designs and features related to the lunar program.
SpaceX is known for rapidly producing multiple iterations of boosters as part of its capital-intensive test-to-fail philosophy for rocket development. But it was not clear whether it readily had another V3 booster with which it could resume testing, or how many months the incident could delay the Starship program.
Of Starship’s five flight tests this year, the first three suffered complex and explosive setbacks before SpaceX resumed steady development progress in August, making it a turbulent year. Starship’s final flight in October was the final test before SpaceX decided to build the V3 version, which it hoped to fly in February 2026.
Starbase, SpaceX’s sprawling Starship facility in South Texas, has experienced several test explosions in the past. A Starship booster exploded in a giant fireball on its test platform in June, sending debris across the U.S.-Mexico border 2 miles (3.22 km) and sparking political tensions with the country’s president.
