Fiery Catastrophe: SpaceX’s Starship Erupts Into Midnight Blaze in Texas

SpaceX blew up another rocket. This time, Starship Ship 36 turned into a spectacular fireball just after 11 p.m. CT on June 18, 2025, lighting up the Texas night sky like the world’s most expensive fireworks show. The explosion happened at the Massey facility near Starbase during what should have been a routine static fire test prep.

The blast was massive. Windows shook miles away, and the resulting inferno illuminated production facilities and launch sites that weren’t even close to ground zero. Emergency crews rushed to tackle the blaze while thick smoke billowed into the darkness. The rocket test stand? Toast. The surrounding infrastructure at Massey? Pretty much wrecked.

SpaceX was loading liquid methane and liquid oxygen for a planned static fire of six Raptor engines when things went sideways. Ship 36 had successfully completed a single-engine test just two days earlier on June 16. The company called it a “major anomaly” – corporate speak for “our rocket blew up real good.” They’re still investigating what exactly caused this latest spectacular failure.

Major anomaly is just corporate speak for our rocket blew up real good.

Nobody got hurt, thankfully. SpaceX had established a safety perimeter before the test, and all personnel were accounted for after the explosion. Local officials helped secure the area, and residents in nearby communities weren’t in danger, though they probably got quite the show. The blast site sits about 5 miles from Starship production facilities and 9 miles from Brownsville.

This marks yet another setback for the troubled Starship program. Just this year, they’ve had mid-flight explosions in January and March, an early breakup during reentry in May, and a Starship that exploded over the Indian Ocean weeks ago while testing Starlink deployment. That’s a lot of expensive fireworks. Despite these failures, SpaceX still holds approximately 4 billion dollars in NASA contracts for the Human Landing System to carry astronauts to the moon.

SpaceX keeps pushing forward with their “rapid test-and-learn approach,” which is a fancy way of saying they blow stuff up until something works. The FAA had issued airspace warnings for a full vehicle flight test as early as June 29, but this latest explosion might mess with that timeline.

The company immediately started “safing operations” to prevent more explosions. Because one massive fireball per night is probably enough.