SpaceX tested a Raptor 3 engine at Starbase, Texas, and the spacex starship engine test ended in an explosion caught on camera by NASASpaceflight. The blast hit the pad at the company town in South Texas, where no one would have been anywhere near the test site.
The pad is built to withstand explosions, but the footage left one key question unanswered: what exactly went wrong. SpaceX gave no immediate explanation, and the failed test comes as the company presses ahead with Starship V3, the third version of its still-in-development launch vehicle.
That vehicle sits at the center of SpaceX’s biggest ambitions. Elon Musk stated last year that an uncrewed Starship would go to Mars in 2026, while the company says astronauts on Artemis IV will use Starship V3 to descend to and ascend from the lunar surface. To make that work, SpaceX will first have to prove the system in Earth orbit during a successful demonstration tied to Artemis III next year.
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Refueling remains the hardest part of the plan. Starship will need to be topped off in orbit to reach the Moon and Mars, and the article says that has never been done before except by Chinese satellites, maybe. The idea is that one Starship would refuel another, a process that has not yet been shown at scale.
The pressure is especially high because Starship has not yet left the experimental stage. Prior versions have only reached sub-orbital flights, and several earlier test vehicles ended in spectacular detonations of their own. SpaceX’s first flight of a Starship V3 is set for May, just ahead of an IPO that is looking like it will come in June.
For now, the latest explosion is another reminder that SpaceX is still trying to make Starship into a machine that can survive launch, refuel in space and land crews on another world. The hardware keeps moving forward, but the calendar is unforgiving.
