HOUR SpaceX Thursday tested the most powerful and largest rocket ever built on the planet. All went well for about four minutes until the spacecraft exploded.

Now the situation is being assessed by the company, local officials, and environmental organizations.

Regulators said they are reviewing the impact of the launch on the environment and public safety. Environmental groups and some locals say they are concerned about the impact of SpaceX testing on and around their base.

For SpaceX, the unmanned test flight, which flew about 38.6 kilometers in the sky, successfully passed several “milestones”. The rocket withstood the most stressful part of the flight. The launch of the massive vehicle itself was also a successful milestone, the company said.

The test, which took years to prepare, was one of the necessary steps before SpaceX could attempt to get humans to the Moon, and later even Mars, according to the company’s vision. OUR SpaceX wants to prove that its Starship Super Heavy rocket can take a large spacecraft into orbit and safely land vehicles for future reuse.

Last year, the Civil Aviation Authority, which led an environmental assessment of SpaceX’s Starship plans, identified dozens of steps the company needed to take to mitigate the effects of the Starship launch.

When the 120-meter car with tons of fuel took off, a large plume of smoke spread around the launch pad. A video later released by SpaceX shows material being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico in the early moments of the launch. The rocket exploded about four minutes after liftoff.

A safety zone has been defined for the launch to ensure that no one gets dangerously close to the SpaceX launch pad. Starship’s manufacturing and assembly facilities are located near the Gulf of Mexico beach, about 20 miles east of Brownsville, Texas, a city of approximately 188,000 people.

A portion of the highway leading to the site and the beach with the company’s rig will remain closed until Friday for safety reasons during cleanup operations, a senior Cameron County official said.