SpaceX is best known for its Falcon-series of rockets that often resupply the International Space Station and ferry satellites into space to deploy an orbit around the Earth. But another thing SpaceX has become somewhat famous for in recent memory is Starship, a prototype space vehicle that Elon Musk hopes will one day evolve into the ultimate deep-space transportation solution for humans.
Starship has made headlines a number of times previous for its incrementally higher jumps into the air while test-firing the vehicle’s ignition system, but more recently, Starship appears to have experienced an explosive failure as the commercial space company conducted a planned pressure test.
This video footage, captured at the commercial space agency’s Boca Chica, Texas-based facility, reveals what appears to be the Starship prototype vehicle undergoing a pressure test and ultimately exploding. After the explosion, we see crinkled metal near the top of the vehicle followed by billows of white smoke.
The crinkled metal speaks to just how highly pressurized this test was, but according to SpaceX, the test was intended to crank pressure up to the maximum threshold and that the result wasn’t particularly unexpected.
SpaceX will undoubtedly come out with a new prototype sometime in the future, perhaps one with significant upgrades to both aesthetics and durability, among other things.