The critical errors that doomed Elon Musk's Starship rocket
Elon Musk's Starship rocket had been cruising for almost half an hour when it became clear something was wrong.
After blasting off from Starbase, SpaceX's sprawling complex on the Texas coast, Musk's rocket had successfully reached orbit and was falling back towards Earth.
But as Starship descended, it began to spiral.
Telemetry data and video feeds showed the ship rapidly losing control before tumbling through the upper atmosphere.
'We are in a little bit of a spin,' said Dan Huot, the SpaceX official hosting the company's livestream.
The final images from the video feed showed ethereal plasma flashing around the vessel, melting its panels as temperatures hit 14,000 degrees Celsius.
Signal was soon lost as the rocket suffered a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly', exploding over a vast area of the Indian Ocean.
The rocket's demise will now be closely examined by SpaceX engineers as they prepare to launch a separate 400ft megarocket in just a few weeks.
'We are in a bit of a spin'
Tuesday's launch marked the ninth test flight of Starship, building towards SpaceX's goal of producing a reusable spaceship that could one day fulfil Musk's dream of colonising Mars.
The latest flight included several firsts for SpaceX that inch Musk towards that goal.
Importantly, the company was able to reuse the 232ft booster stage – known as Super Heavy – from an earlier flight in which it landed successfully.
SpaceX's Starship also flew further than in its two most recent tests.
However, the post-mortem will seek to understand and rectify two key problems that threaten its multi-planetary ambitions.
The first issue emerged as SpaceX attempted to deploy eight dummy satellites into space about 18 minutes into its mission, 120 miles above the Earth.
Musk wants to use Starship to ferry thousands of his Starlink satellites into space, as well as other crucial material for future missions to the Moon and Mars.
However, the hatch that was meant to release the satellites appeared to fail. Twelve minutes later, Hout said SpaceX had lost crucial control of the ship after a fuel leak.
'We are in a bit of a spin,' he said. 'We did spring a leak in some of the fuel tank systems inside Starship. A lot of those are used for your altitude control.'
Minutes later, the ship burst into flames and exploded over the Indian Ocean.
Nonetheless, Musk was quick to insist the mission was a 'big improvement' compared to previous attempts, as he said there was 'lots of good data to review'.
'With a test like this, success comes from what we learn,' SpaceX said after the mission. 'Today's test will help us improve Starship's reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary.'
Mounting pressure
Still, it is the third test flight out of three so far this year that has ended with the loss of a rocket, with each launch costing the company $100m.
Shortly after the mission, Musk also pulled out of a scheduled livestream where he had planned to give an update on the company's plans to colonise Mars, perhaps in a sign there is still work to be done.
It comes amid mounting pressure on the company.
Nasa plans to use Musk's rockets for its Artemis III mission to the Moon in 2027, intended to return mankind to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.
Musk has also set SpaceX a typically ambitious target of human landings on Mars by 2029.
For the most part, SpaceX analysts have argued that the company's approach of 'rapid iterative design' is helping the company move faster towards these targets.
Its previous rockets, including its Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 designs, were built using such a process of constant trial and error.
However, Chris Combs, an aerospace expert at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said on X after the mission:
Ninth test flight in over two years
No payloads (doors won't open now?)
No Starship reuse
Uncontrolled reentry
Crew and Mars a distant dream
I want to see this work but it feels like playing whack-a-mole with a very complex system full of failure modes at > $100M per swing… https://t.co/5xS6c7SyfS
— Chris Combs (iterative design enjoyer) (@DrChrisCombs) May 28, 2025
The company will now hope to avoid a lengthy investigation into the failure, although the SpaceX team remains optimistic.
As last night's livestream came to a close, Huot said: 'We're trying to do something that's impossibly hard.
'We said there's going to be bumps. There's going to be turns. But seeing that ship in space today was a hell of a moment for us.'
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