SpaceX Starship SN8 crash lands after first successful high-altitude flight

Space's SN8 Starship prototype followed a successful high-altitude flight with an explosive crash landing on the Texas Gulf coast Wednesday.

Founder Elon Musk, who had long warned that such a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" was possible, was quick to declare the flight a success.

SpaceX's latest Starship prototype managed to lift off its launch pad after an attempt on Tuesday was aborted with just one second left due to an issue with the Raptor engines. Following lift-off at around 1:45 p.m. PT, one of the three Raptor engines stopped firing about two minutes into its flight. The rocket continued to climb towards eight miles (12.5 kilometers) as part of its first high-altitude test flight.

At about four minutes into the flight, a second engine shut down and the craft seemed to sort of hover for a while until the final Raptor shut down and SN8 began its free fall back to Earth. As it approached the ground, thrusters around the rocket were used to perform a flip maneuver and orient it vertically in preparation for a landing burn like we've become used to seeing with the company's smaller Falcon 9 rockets.

That burn did not appear to slow down SN8 soon enough or quickly enough as it came in for a spectacularly rough and explosive landing.

Notably though, the wreckage showed that it did hit the middle of the landing pad.

Developing...

If it does make it off the ground this week, Starship could get much closer to Mars than it's ever been, but even if it succeeds, it'll still have a long way to go.

"The schedule is dynamic and likely to change, as is the case with all development testing," SpaceX wrote earlier on its YouTube channel.

"This suborbital flight is designed to test a number of objectives, from how the vehicle's three Raptor engines perform, and the overall aerodynamic entry capabilities of the vehicle, including its body flaps, to how the vehicle manages propellant transition."

The flight will also see SN8 attempt a new "landing flip" maneuver. Basically, after it reaches its maximum altitude, its engines will cut out and it'll then essentially free fall for a period. As it nears the landing pad, the Raptor engines will fire back up and attempt to flip the rocket back into a vertical position with some help from the flaps and small thrusters. All these tools will hopefully help steer and stabilize the rocket as it comes in for a familiar landing burn like we've now seen dozens of times from the smaller Falcon 9.

Elon Musk and SpaceX have continued to improve the company's next-generation rocket intended to eventually transport thousands of Earthlings to Mars, the moon and other destinations. Over the past 18 months, a handful of short test flights, or "hops," have seen a few prototypes lift off a pad in Texas, rise to an elevation of about 500 feet (150 meters) and then come back down for a soft landing.