Up close, the blast would have been Earth-shattering.

Big Boom

SpaceX successfully launched, flipped, and landed its Starship SN10 prototype on Wednesday afternoon.

But several minutes after touchdown, the stainless steel rocket exploded in a massive fireball.

The explosion was so powerful, Houston-based meteorologist Matt Lanza pointed out in a tweet, that it appears to have showed up on local weather radar.

Weather System

The explosion appears to have manifested as a green-yellow blip in the bottom left corner of the radar footage, showing changes in the weather conditions of the region surrounding SpaceX’s testing facilities in Boca Chica, Texas.

Up close, the explosion must have been Earth-shattering. Photos taken at the scene on Thursday morning show the aftermath of the explosion: a huge pile of scrap metal.

Fireball #3

It’s not the first time that a Starship test has ended in a colossal fireball. Test launches of SN10’s predecessors SN8 and SN9 met a similar fate during their respective December and February test launches.

Because of those bumps in the road, SpaceX needed permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to launch SN10 on Wednesday. And concerns over the safety of those near the launch site caused the agency to delay the launch of SN9 last month.

An ensuing investigation, however, was terminated earlier this week, with the FAA concluding that SpaceX took sufficient safety precautions and greenlighting the company’s SN10 launch.

More on Starship: Elon Musk Says Starship “Landed in One Piece.” Fact Check: Kinda.

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SpaceX’s futuristic Starship looked like it aced a touchdown Wednesday, but then exploded on the landing pad with so much force that it was hurled into the air.

The failure occurred just minutes after SpaceX declared success. Two previous test flights crash-landed in fireballs.

The full-scale prototype of Elon Musk’s envisioned Mars ship soared more than 6 miles (10 kilometres) after lifting off from the southern tip of Texas on Wednesday. It descended horizontally over the Gulf of Mexico and then flipped upright just in time to land.

The shiny bullet-shaped rocketship remained intact this time at touchdown, prompting SpaceX commentator John Insprucker to declare, “third time’s a charm as the saying goes” before SpaceX ended its webcast of the test.

But then the Starship exploded and was tossed in the air, before slamming down into the ground in flames.

There was no immediate comment from SpaceX on what went wrong. But Musk looked on the bright side in a tweet: “Starship 10 landed in one piece! RIP SN10, honourable discharge.”

He added: “SpaceX team is doing great work! One day, the true measure of success will be that Starship flights are commonplace.”

Musk plans to use Starships to send people to the moon and Mars.

The last two prototypes reached a similarly high altitude in December and February, but slammed into the ground at Boca Chica, Texas, and exploded.

Each of these last three test flights lasted 6 1/2 minutes.

VIDEO: SpaceX capsule with 4 astronauts reaches space station

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

Aviation and spaceSpace

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A ‘voluntary recall’ has been issued for the Pieps DSP Sport, Pieps DSP Pro and Pieps DSP Ice avalanche transceivers.

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Black Diamond and Pieps have finally announced a recall of the DSP avalanche transceivers that have been blamed for at least one death of a backcountry skier since 2017. In October, Pieps, a European producer of avalanche safety equipment and Black Diamond, its U.S. retailer, came under fire with allegations that their Pieps DSP avalanche transceivers could inadvertently switch from “send” to “search” mode, rendering the device useless to the wearer should they be caught in an avalanche and get tumbled around, switching the mode. Back in October, Pieps and Black Diamond asserted that their devices worked “above industry standards,” but that nonetheless they would replace any of the affected transceivers (the DSP Pro, DSP Sport, and DSP Ice), giving the customer an upgrade to the newest version for only $100. Now, months later, Pieps and Black Diamond have announced a “voluntary recall” for the devices.

In the comments of the Instagram post (above) where Black Diamond announced the recall, customers expressed frustration that it had taken this long for the recall to be issued. Furthermore, in the months leading up to the full recall, Black Diamond/Pieps had given customers with a faulty transceiver the option to upgrade to the newer version that doesn’t suffer from the same downfall for $100. Now, those same customers are wondering whether they will get refunded their $100 after the device they had traded in is being recalled.

Pro skier Cody Townsend also expressed frustration at the lack of clarity around the situation. “Nearly every avy company I’ve worked with has had recalls, it’s part of the game, but so far, those companies have owned it, fixed it and made better products because of it,” Cody said over Instagram Stories. “So it still baffles me that BD/Pieps has had such reluctance to admit a flaw and fix the problem. If they did, none of this would have ever been an issue to the magnitude it has been.”

The new fix for the problem comes in the form of a hard-shell carrying case for the avalanche transceiver that locks it into “send” mode when worn as shown in the video below.

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You can find out more about the Pieps recall here, and you can find out more about the Black Diamond recall (effective for U.S. customers) here.

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