Elon Musk’s SpaceX Celebrates as Starship Achieves 15 Minute Flight Before Exploding

On Saturday at 8:03 a.m. Eastern time, the most powerful rocket ever built achieved lift off.

The crowning glory of Elon Musk's SpaceX fleet, Starship managed to clear its launch pad at Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, and ascend into the air. The test flight ended prematurely however — the ship exploded about fifteen minutes into flight for reasons that are still unclear.

It was all going well at first.

The rocket achieved Max Q — the moment of maximum stress on the machine — at about a minute into flight. The booster engine cut off at 2 minutes and 50 seconds in — it exploded at about 3 and a half minutes and did not survive. But the Starship did manage to do a loop-the-loop maneuver and make its way upward to space.

All six of Starship's second stage engines ignited — an incredible success (even though the booster exploded). At five minutes in, everything was looking good. A primary objective for this test was to see Starship fire its engines, with the hope that it makes it to orbital altitude.

But at 8:14 a.m Eastern, SpaceX engineer John Insprucker said he believed that the second stage had also experienced "a rapid unscheduled disassembly" (engineer speak for" it exploded").

Elon Musk and his brother, Kimbal Musk, were watching as the ship launched in Texas. And as the rocket lifted off, SpaceX engineers and onlookers could be heard cheering.

Ultimately, SpaceX did not achieve its ultimate goal for the test — to make it to orbit and have the rocket survive the trip. But it will no doubt have learned a lot from what it did achieve: Unlike the last test when it blew up about 2 and a half minutes into the flight, this Starship made it through multiple stages of flight, from lift off to booster separation, to firing its own engines.