Boca Chica, Texas — SpaceX's Starship giant new rocket exploded on Thursday during the first test flight of the spacecraft designed to send astronauts to the moon, Mars and beyond.

The gigantic rocket successfully blasted off at 8:33 am Central Time from Starbase, the private SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas.

The Starship capsule had been scheduled to separate from the first-stage rocket booster three minutes into the uncrewed flight but separation failed to occur and the rocket blew up.

"As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation," SpaceX tweeted.

Despite the failure to complete the full flight test, SpaceX declared it a success."We cleared the tower which was our only hope," said Kate Tice, a SpaceX quality systems engineer.

"With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today's test will help us improve Starship's reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary," SpaceX tweeted.

US space agency NASA has picked the Starship spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the moon in late 2025 — a mission known as Artemis III-for the first time since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

Starship consists of a 50-metertall spacecraft designed to carry crew and cargo that sits atop a first-stage Super Heavy booster rocket.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk had warned ahead of the launch that technical issues were likely and sought to play down expectations for the inaugural test flight. "It's a very risky flight," he said. "It's the first launch of a very complicated, gigantic rocket.

"There's a million ways this rocket could fail," Musk said.

The plan for the integrated test flight was for the Super Heavy booster to separate from Starship about three minutes after launch and splash down in the Gulf of Mexico.

They failed to separate however and the booster rocket and Starship spacecraft exploded in the sky in a ball of fire four minutes into the flight.

"If we get far enough away from the launchpad before something goes wrong then I think I would consider that to be a success," Musk said before the flight. "Just don't blow up the launchpad."