Elon Musk’s dream of reaching Mars in ruins after SpaceX Starship explodes again

The world’s most pow­er­ful rock­et has had yet anoth­er set­back after explod­ing into a giant fire­ball dur­ing a rou­tine test.

The SpaceX Star­ship burst into a flames at Elon Musk’s Star­base test site in Texas at 11pm local time (5am in the UK).

The Star­ship is all part of Musk’s dream to send humans to Mars, but its flights have also bro­ken apart in mid-air.

This time, the rock­et had not even left the ground but was under­go­ing a sta­t­ic fire test.

Video shows its nose sud­den­ly burst­ing open with a huge ball of fire and smoke erupt­ing from the blast.

A sta­t­ic fire test is a pre-flight pro­ce­dure where the rocket’s engines are ignit­ed while the vehi­cle is bolt­ed to the launch mount.

SpaceX said their Star­ship 36 rock­et had suf­fered a ‘major anom­aly’, but that ‘all per­son­nel are safe and account­ed for’.

They added: ‘Our Star­base team is active­ly work­ing to safe the test site and the imme­di­ate sur­round­ing area in con­junc­tion with local offi­cials.

‘There are no haz­ards to res­i­dents in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties, and we ask that indi­vid­u­als do not attempt to approach the area while saf­ing oper­a­tions con­tin­ue.’

How­ev­er a loud rum­ble from the blast was felt by near­by res­i­dents, who report­ed their win­dows shak­ing and dish­es rat­tling, 

A rou­tine test end­ed in a giant fire­ball (Pic­ture: NASA Space­Flight)

The Texas blast comes weeks after a Star­ship crash land­ed moments after take-off.

The rock­et did reach space on May 27, but it began spin­ning soon after­wards and went out of con­trol towards a crash land­ing in the sea

Its pay­load could also not be released because the door failed to open all the way.

SpaceX boss Elon Musk said it was still a ‘big improve­ment’ on the last launch­es, which end­ed with flam­ing debris dra­mat­i­cal­ly rain­ing down from the sky over the Atlantic.

Despite the set­back, Mr Musk promised a faster pace in future with a Star­ship lift­ing off every three to four weeks for the next three flights.

The pow­er­ful rock­ets are a key part of Nasa’s plans to return humans to the Moon this decade, as well as poten­tial­ly get to Mars after that.