The largest and most powerful rocket in history, SpaceX’s Starship V3, had a successful launch and a successful explosion once it returned to Earth.
The SpaceX rocket’s demise was planned as it splashed down in the Indian Ocean on Friday.
TMZ likened it to a “12,000-pound bomb.”
The fiery end came after an hour-long test flight, the BBC reported.
The flight was initially delayed because of a malfunctioning hydraulic pin in the launch tower.
There were also issues when one of the 33 first-stage Raptor engines shut down, a booster missed the “boost back” maneuver, and one of the upper stages lost a main engine during its ascent, but still made it to space on five engines, Space.com reported.
The objective of the test was to evaluate new hardware while in flight.
It held 20 mock Starlink satellites that were deployed during the flight, according to The Guardian. There were two real Starlink satellites used to scan Starship’s heat shield tiles.
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