A new test rocket manufactured by Elon Musk’s upstart space company, SpaceX, blew itself up a few hundred feet over vast Texas prairieland after a problem was detected, the company said Friday.

At its facility in the central Texas town of McGregor, the company was testing a three-engine version of the F9R test vehicle, the successor of its reusable Grasshopper rocket, which was designed to launch and land on the same site.

“During the flight, an anomaly was detected in the vehicle and the flight termination system automatically terminated the mission,” company spokesman John Taylor said.

The rocket never veered off course, and there were no injuries or near injuries, the company said. A representative from the Federal Aviation Administration was on site during the test flight.

The company stressed that rooting out problems like the one exposed during the flight is the whole purpose of the test program. It said Friday’s test “was particularly complex, pushing the limits of the vehicle further than any previous test. As is our practice, the company will be reviewing the flight record details to learn more about the performance of the vehicle prior to our next test.”

The explosion comes as the company is fighting to gain a share of the market to launch national security satellites into orbit. This year, SpaceX sued the Air Force, arguing that it should be able to compete for launches against United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

SpaceX is also competing for a lucrative NASA contract to launch astronauts to the International Space Station. It is unclear if the explosion would have any effect on the awarding of that contract. NASA officials did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

The California-based company was the first commercial enterprise to send cargo to the space station.

A video posted on the website of KWTX, a Texas news station, shows the rocket taking off, then erupting into a fireball and a cloud of smoke.

In a tweet, Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur founder of Tesla Motors and PayPal, acknowledged the difficulties inherent in space flight: “Rockets are tricky.”