Elon Musk's Spaceship Blows Up Moments After Launch

The largest and most powerful rocket ever built, Elon Musk's Starship, exploded minutes after blastoff in Texas on Thursday. 

Starship, scheduled for a trip that would mark the first step towards taking humans to Mars, was on a test flight by SpaceX when it blew up. 

The 120 metre long spacecraft reportedly took off at about 8:33 CET (2:33pm in the UK), gathered speed immediately but began to spin at altitude before exploding a few minutes after ejecting from its launch pad. 

Video images showed two sections of the rocket system-the booster and cruise vessel, unable to separate properly after takeoff, possibly causing the spacecraft to fail.

It would be recalled that SpaceX cautioned that the craft had low chances of success, adding that data gathering remains the aim of the flight. 

The nearly three passenger jets-long Spaceship stands 10 metres taller than Saturn V rocket which took humans to the moon in 1969.

Placed atop the Super Heavy booster rocket with 33 Raptor engines to provide the needed big thrust, the ship was designed to, on the long run, ferry about 100 astronauts. 

In addition to its super structure, both the ship's upper and lower segments are designed to power themselves safely back to earth for a soft landing just so that they can be used again, a reason Musk says the rockets make space flight significantly cheaper than what Nasa could offer.