“As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation,” SpaceX tweeted, apparently referring to the explosion with playful language.

If successful, the flight would have marked a major step in CEO Elon Musk’s goal to send humans back to the moon and to deep-space destinations including Mars.

SpaceX had originally planned to launch the uncrewed test mission on April 17 before calling it off about 10 minutes before the scheduled take-off due to a frozen pressure valve on the rocket.

Starship was conceived to bring people – including Nasa astronauts – and cargo such as satellites into Earth’s orbit and beyond.

The rocket was more powerful than any previous crewed spacecraft and taller than the Saturn V, which took humans to the moon. The launch vehicle system had also been designed to be fully reusable, which SpaceX promised would reduce costs.

After an initial climb to space, the Super Heavy booster rocket was expected to break away from Starship and do a controlled dive into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Starship spacecraft should have continued onwards and arced through space completing almost a full lap around the Earth. It was then supposed to land in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii.

Musk has sought to temper expectations for a perfectly successful launch.

“I would like to just set expectations”, Musk said a day before the first attempt during an audio discussion on Twitter.

“We get far enough away from the launch pad before something goes wrong, then I think I would consider that to be a success. Just don’t blow up the launch pad”.