major setback struck SpaceX’s ambitious Starship program late Wednesday night when a prototype of its upper-stage spacecraft exploded in a dramatic fireball at the company’s Massey test facility near Starbase, Texas. The incident occurred at approximately 11 p.m. local time (0400 UTC Thursday), during preparations for a critical static fire test of the vehicle's six Raptor engines.
Starship Ship 36 explodes at SpaceX’s Massey test flight.. Image: LabPadre Space.
The vehicle, designated Ship 36, was undergoing fueling with liquid methane and liquid oxygen — the highly combustible propellants used in its Raptor engines — when the blast tore through the stainless-steel craft, lighting up the night sky. The explosion, captured in real sent shockwaves through the aerospace community and cast further uncertainty on the timeline for Starship’s next flight.
SpaceX confirmed the event in a statement posted to X (formerly Twitter), describing it as a “major anomaly.” The company emphasized that all personnel were safe and accounted for, with safety exclusion zones maintained around the site during the test. "Our Starbase team is actively working to secure the test site and the surrounding area in conjunction with local officials," SpaceX said. "There are no hazards to nearby communities, but we ask that individuals do not approach the area while safing operations continue."
This prototype was being readied for Starship’s 10th integrated flight test, which was tentatively targeted for June 29, according to previous FAA airspace advisories. The test would have paired Ship 36 with a fully loaded Super Heavy Booster, whose 33 Raptor engines were successfully static-fired earlier this month.
The explosion marks the latest in a string of Starship upper-stage failures. Test flights earlier this year — Flights 7, 8, and 9 — all ended with the loss of the Ship vehicle. Flights 7 and 8 suffered explosions during the ascent phase, while Flight 9, launched on May 27, completed its climb to space but lost attitude control during reentry and was destroyed before completing key in-space maneuvers.
Despite those setbacks, Super Heavy, the rocket’s massive first stage, has shown encouraging signs of reusability. The booster used in Flight 9 was the same unit that flew and returned during Flight 7 — a milestone in SpaceX’s goal of rapid rocket reusability.
Starship, standing over 400 feet tall when fully stacked, is the most powerful launch system ever built and is central to SpaceX’s long-term vision of interplanetary travel. Elon Musk has repeatedly touted Starship as the vehicle that could carry humans to Mars as early as 2026, while also enabling lunar landings and space station servicing missions.
NASA is heavily invested in Starship’s success, having selected a version of the vehicle as the Human Landing System (HLS) for its Artemis III mission, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon in 2027.
However, the loss of Ship 36 is likely to delay that timeline further, as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) must now oversee a new mishap investigation. SpaceX is already working with the FAA to analyze what went wrong during Flight 9, and this latest explosion adds another layer of complexity to the agency's ongoing assessments.
With the test stand and surrounding infrastructure possibly damaged, and another prototype now lost, the road to Starship’s 10th flight just became significantly steeper.
As of now, no new launch date has been confirmed, and Starbase teams continue working to secure and assess the Massey test site.
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