A SpaceX test on Sunday ended in an explosion at the company’s Texas site, forcing the test to be aborted during a water deluge trial tied to the next Starship launch. A brief flash appeared at the start of an 18-second video, followed by a part flying away in a high arc and a large plume of water shooting into the air.
NASA Spaceflight.com, which operates a live cam at Starbase in Boca Chica on the Gulf of Mexico, said on X that what looked like an explosive event was seen in the deluge farm before the system shut down. The water deluge system is meant to absorb heat and energy from a rocket during launch, and SpaceX uses it as part of the pad infrastructure for Starship.
The incident matters because it hits a crucial piece of the launch system just as SpaceX is preparing for Starship V3, the vehicle it announced after the eleventh flight of Starship last October. The first launch of Starship V3 has already slipped several times and is now scheduled for May 12.
SpaceX has recently run into problems with the Ground Support Equipment for the deluge system, a steel plate under the launch pad with holes that pumps about 1.3 million liters of water at high pressure during liftoff. The water evaporates from the heat of the engines, helping protect the pad from the force of the launch. SpaceX installed the system after the launch pad was severely damaged during Starship’s first launch in April 2023.
The failure leaves open how much additional work is now needed before the May 12 attempt, and whether the company can keep that date after another setback at the pad. For now, the video shows a test that ended the wrong way and a launch program still pushing against the limits of its ground hardware.
