Watch | Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship explodes during flight test

A Starship spacecraft of Elon Musk-owned SpaceX exploded into a fireball on Wednesday during a test flight.

Starship’s Ship 36 encountered an anomaly and burst into a massive fireball at Massey’s Testing Center in Texas.

SpaceX in a brief statement said that the accident occurred at around 11 pm CT during the spacecraft’s 10th flight test. The explosion was caught in a livefeed — see below. The company said that no one was injured in the explosion.

“A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for. Our Starbase team is actively working to safe the test site and the immediate surrounding area in conjunction with local officials,” the statement read.

The company further said that while there is no active hazard to neighbouring communities, they should not approach the area while safety operations continue.

This was the fourth consecutive time that the Starship had exploded during flight test. The Starship previously exploded in during the seventh, eighth, and ninth flight tests as well earlier this year.

While the cause of the accident is not known, narrators in the livefeed said around the time of the explosion that static fire test was supposed to start soon. The explosion happened around 30 minutes after the propellant load sequence started.

A static fire test is a must pre-launch test in which spacecraft’s engines are ignited as the spacecraft remains secured to the ground. The engines are usually ignited for a few seconds to judge its performance. No actual takes place during this procedure. In the case of Starship, such tests are conducted for the Super Heavy booster as well as the upper stage spacecraft Starship together and sometimes separately.

These strings of accidents have come amid Musk’s focus to bring costs down per launch and maximise launches in a year.