SpaceX 's ninth Starship test flight ended abruptly on Tuesday when the rocket experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" — the company's favourite euphemism for "exploded." It's the third Starship test flight in a row to end in fiery failure, Elon Musk 's space company having had a poor run as of late.

The Starship rocket did not achieve some of its most important testing goals, bringing fresh engineering hurdles to CEO Elon Musk's increasingly turbulent Mars rocket program.

SpaceX's latest unmanned Starship launch experienced various hiccups on Tuesday, May 27 and eventually broke up about an hour after it took off.

After launch, an apparent propellant leak entered its suborbital trajectory left Starship spinning and mission control unable to control the craft.

SpaceX's Starship successfully separated from its Super Heavy rocket booster and reached orbit Tuesday evening, but later began spinning and made an

SpaceX's latest test flight was a failure. The company has seen mixed results after more than two years of launching test flights.

Agency will require SpaceX to complete a mishap investigation and must issue a return to flight designation before the next launch.

The partially successful test followed two earlier failures, posing challenges for Elon Musk’s grand vision for the large spacecraft.