The world’s most powerful rocket ever – blew up on its first integrated flight test

About four minutes into flight – SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico on its Thursday flight in Texas.

It climbed to just under 40 kilometres, making it less than halfway to the edge of space.

Touted as the world’s most-powerful rocket ever – it was unmanned and on its first integrated flight test.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk watched the launch from space command and said afterwards that he was pleased.

A sentiment also shared by cheering employees.

Even though the mission fell short of reaching several objectives, SpaceX engineers say they learned a lot to make future improvements.

Starship is massive and one day when it’s cleared to carry humans, it could take some 100 astronauts or even large loads of cargo to a staging area on the moon.

America and its global partners want to build a staging area on the Moon for humans to be able to conduct space flights to Mars.