At 18:37 CDT (23:37 UTC) last night, SpaceX's Starship rocket lifted off for the 9th time. This was the first attempt to launch Starship on a reused booster stage, and it saw some success; for the first time in 3 tests, Starship made it into space. However, little else went according to plan. When attempting to deploy mock satellites, Starship's bay doors failed to open. The craft then sprang a fuel tank leak, causing it to spin out of control and eventually burn up as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere. The booster stage, meanwhile, was intended to splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, but exploded around 6 minutes into the test. So goes another test flight of Starship, the vehicle that billionaire Elon Musk hopes will carry people to Mars.
Starship - the world's biggest and most powerful launch vehicle at 400 feet ((122 meters) tall - is key to Musk's Mars dreams. And Test Flight 9 did soar past the explosion points for two earlier test flights this year. But then, according to The Guardian, the ship:
... sprang leaks and began spinning out of control as it coasted through space on a suborbital path before re-entering the atmosphere out of control and eventually breaking apart.