Boca Chica, Texas – SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk, conducted another test launch of its Starship rocket, with President-elect Donald Trump present to witness the event. However, the test flight did not go according to plan.
The 122-meter tall rocket, designed to carry astronauts to the Moon and crew to Mars, was launched from Boca Chica, Texas. The launch initially seemed promising, but the first stage of the rocket, known as Super Heavy, unexpectedly exploded over the Gulf of Mexico rather than attempting to land back on its launch platform, indicating a malfunction during the mission.
The launch, attended by Trump, signals a deepening alliance between the Republican president-elect and the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. This connection is expected to benefit Musk’s companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, with favorable treatment from the U.S. government.
Musk has also been appointed as co-chair of a new government efficiency project under Trump.
After separating from the second phase of the launch, the booster was supposed to “catch and secure” itself on what the company refers to as “pins” at the launch site. However, this “capture” attempt was called off just four minutes after the test flight, and the booster ultimately fell into the water three minutes later.
Meanwhile, the Starship rocket itself fell about an hour later, this time in the Indian Ocean, off the northern coast of Australia.
This was the sixth test for the largest and most powerful rocket in the world, which SpaceX and NASA hope to use to return astronauts to the Moon and eventually send them to Mars.
NASA is paying SpaceX more than $4 billion to land astronauts on the Moon through Starship in multiple missions planned for later this decade.
