A SpaceX testing stand at the company's McGregor, Texas facilities went up in flames during a test of its Raptor 2 engines on the afternoon of May 23. The engine had an anomaly that caused vapors to seep out and lead to a secondary explosion.
They use liquid methane and liquid oxygen as fuel, and they were designed to be powerful enough to be able to send Starship to the moon and Mars. Its gases mixing due to a leak or a similar anomaly could've caused the explosion.
SpaceX is preparing for Starship's fourth test flight, aiming for a soft splashdown of the Super Heavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico and a controlled entry of the Starship spacecraft. Several hardware and software upgrades were made after lessons learned from the third test flight.
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