SpaceX’s Starship rocket experienced an explosive failure minutes after liftoff on Thursday, with debris raining over parts of the Caribbean and prompting temporary air traffic halts in parts of Florida.
The incident marks the second consecutive failure for the company’s Mars rocket program this year.
The rocket, a 403-foot (123-meter) system central to Elon Musk’s plans for human missions to Mars, lifted off at approximately 6:30 p.m. ET from SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch facility in Texas. While the Super Heavy first stage booster returned to Earth as planned and was successfully recovered by a SpaceX crane, the upper stage—known as Starship—began spinning uncontrollably after its engines shut down. Shortly thereafter, telemetry was lost, and videos circulating on social media showed fiery debris streaking across the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas.
SpaceX confirmed in a late statement that an "energetic event" in the aft section of Starship led to the loss of several engines, which in turn caused a loss of attitude control and communication with the spacecraft. “Final contact with Starship came approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds after liftoff,” the company stated. SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot commented on the live stream, “Unfortunately this happened last time too, so we've got some practice now.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) responded to the incident by issuing temporary ground stops at airports in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and Orlando, citing concerns over “space launch debris.” The agency has opened an investigation into the mishap and will require SpaceX to determine the cause of the failure and secure FAA approval before any further flights.
This eighth Starship test attempt follows an earlier failure in January, when the rocket exploded eight minutes into flight, resulting in debris over Caribbean islands and minor damage in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Despite the setbacks, SpaceX remains focused on refining the Starship system, which is intended to complete nearly a full orbit around Earth and execute a controlled re-entry over the Indian Ocean—a precursor to future land-based landing tests.
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