Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship rocket spiraled out of control and exploded in space, sparking flight diversions and air traffic chaos as debris falls from the sky.
It marked a disappointing end to what appeared to be a successful launch, as the billionaire works toward his goal of sending humans to Mars.
A ground stop has been ordered across airports in Florida – including Miami, Orlando, Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale – as a result of the explosion as debris plummets into Earth.
The rocket launched at 5.30pm local time from the ‘Starbase’ in Boca Chica, Texas, as watchers-on waited with bated breath to see if it survived passing ‘the maximum aerodynamic pressure’ point at about one minute and 10 seconds.
More than one million people tuned into Musk’s livestream on X to witness the launch, celebrating and cheering as it successfully rocketed into space.
The booster ‘stuck the landing’ as it returned to Earth, slotting straight back into the ‘chopsticks’ as intended.
But just moments before the ship’s ascent was due to conclude and the team began to celebrate, the rocket started spiraling out of control as four of the six engines cut out.
Seconds later, the livestream video ended and SpaceX staff confirmed they’d ‘lost contact with the ship.’
‘I think it’s pretty obvious we’re not going to continue the rest of the mission today,’ SpaceX’s Dan Huot said.
Extraordinary video from the Bahamas shows debris falling from the sky as the rocket imploded in fiery ball of flames.
‘We are taking cover here in the Ragged Islands, Bahamas,’ one local said. ‘Cross your fingers for us!’
Others reported seeing the same thing from the skies of Miami.
‘We’ve got a lot of measures in place, like debris response areas, where we coordinate very closely with air traffic control,’ Huot said.
‘We have a lot of measures before we ever launch a rocket to make sure that we’re keeping the public safe. Those worked last time and they’re actively in work right now.’
In the lead up to the launch on Thursday evening, SpaceX detailed several operational changes which had been made to ‘increase the reliability’ of the rocket.
But SpaceX released a statement on Thursday evening confirming the explosion and failed mission.
‘During Starship’s ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost,’ SpaceX said in a statement.
‘Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses. We will review the data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause.
‘As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship’s reliability.’
Flight 8 was scheduled to lift off on Monday evening from SpaceX’s ‘Starbase’. However, a technical issue on the launch pad could not be fixed in time and the mission was scrubbed.
Their first attempt at launching Flight 8 was called off on Friday, February 28 with no official reason given.
In a statement, SpaceX said there was a goal to achieve new objectives during Thursday’s mission.
‘The upcoming flight will fly the same suborbital trajectory as previous missions and will target objectives not reached on the previous test.
‘Developmental testing by definition is unpredictable.
‘But by putting flight hardware in a flight environment as frequently as possible, we’re able to quickly learn and execute design changes as we seek to bring Starship online as a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle.’
Unfortunately, Flight 8 appeared to fail at the same hurdle that has plagued SpaceX before.
Flight 7 exploded at roughly the same point, sending debris flying across islands in Turks and Caicos.
It marked the latest setback for Musk, with his company’s last flight test six weeks ago also ending with a mid-air explosion.
Standing over 400 feet tall, the SpaceX rocket carries two very important parts – the ‘Super Heavy’ booster engine and the starship launch vehicle.
The unmanned test had several goals over the roughly 66-minute planned flight as SpaceX pushes towards Musk’s mission to safely deliver humans to Mars.
For Flight 8 to be a success, Starship would have needed to safely detach from its massive engine (Booster 15) and splash down in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia.
The major success of Flight 8 was that the booster engine returned to the launch pad and was caught by the tower’s ‘chopstick’ arms about seven minutes after launching off.
This revolutionary process allows SpaceX to reuse their booster engines during future missions.
This particular flight had sought to test Starship’s ability to deploy SpaceX’s Starlink satellites during the flight – launching four simulated Starlink modules before ship 34 reenters the atmosphere.
Thursday’s test was the first successful starship launch since the destruction of Flight 7 on January 16.
According to SpaceX, ‘Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn.’
In simpler language, the vehicle designed to take humans to the Red Planet broke apart in a fiery scene less than 10 minutes into its hour-long flight.
The explosion of the spacecraft was captured on camera across the Caribbean just minutes after the flight test, leading to 20 commercial flights being diverted to avoid colliding with debris from the ship.
That failed mission also successfully returned the booster rocket, which was caught in the chopsticks as planned.
Musk recently appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he appeared to rapidly accelerate the timeline for arriving on the Red Planet.
Musk said that SpaceX’s ‘default plan’ was to ‘launch several Starships to Mars at the end of next year.’
These missions would also have no crews, just like Monday’s planned flight test, and would see if the vehicles could successfully land on Mars. Musk noted he’s hoping his company will launch a total of five starships to Mars in 2026.
