SpaceX’s Starship Explodes in Its Seventh Test Flight, With Falling Debris Putting on a Fiery Show

On Thursday, observers in the Turks and Caicos Islands region witnessed a stream of fireballs light up the evening sky. No, it wasn’t aliens or even meteors—it was the remains of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft, which came apart during its seventh test flight.

“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn,” SpaceX wrote in a post on X. That’s a rather understated engineering term to describe an explosion or breaking apart of a spacecraft.

“Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand [the] root cause,” the company continued. “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability.”

At 5:38 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, the Super Heavy booster successfully lifted a redesigned and upgraded Starship from its Texas launch pad in the spacecraft’s first flight test of the year. The booster then separated from the spacecraft as planned, and headed back to the launch site.

To loud cheers and applause, Super Heavy safely landed in the mechanical arms of the catch tower, dubbed “chopsticks.” This marks the second time the maneuver was executed successfully, after the company made the catch on its first try back in October. (SpaceX chose to abort another catch attempt in November.)

Meanwhile, Starship’s six engines gradually shut down during its ascent, reports the Associated Press’ Marcia Dunn, and SpaceX lost contact with the spacecraft about eight and a half minutes into its flight.

The company’s initial data suggest a fire developed in the rear section of the ship, which led to the explosion over the Atlantic Ocean and a consequent rain of debris.

“Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity,” billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote on X. “Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area. Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month.”

SpaceX will carry out an investigation with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to determine what went wrong with the vehicle.

According to CNN’s Jackie Wattles, regulators are looking into reports of property damage from falling debris in Turks and Caicos. Pieces of the broken-up spacecraft also disrupted airspace over the Gulf of Mexico, as Joey Roulette reports for Reuters. Dozens of commercial flights altered their paths to avoid potential debris, and some departures in Florida experienced delays.

“The FAA briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling,” agency officials explain to Space.com’s Mike Wall.

SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot tells the AP that “it was great to see a booster come down, but we are obviously bummed out about ship.” He emphasizes, however, that “it’s a flight test. It’s an experimental vehicle.” Starship was only carrying ten mock Starlink satellites, which engineers had planned for it to release as practice.

In addition to executing a second booster catch, Starship’s most recent test flight also achieved the successful restarting of a Raptor engine used in a previous test flight, according to CBS News’ William Harwood. This is a small but crucial step for SpaceX’s goal of building a “fully reusable transportation system,” because it shows that the engines can fly on multiple missions.

Early Thursday morning, SpaceX’s competitor, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, saw its New Glenn rocket lift off for the first time. The maiden voyage had, in a way, almost opposite results to Starship’s recent test flight: While New Glenn’s spacecraft reached orbit as planned, the separated booster was unable to maneuver to its landing platform.

And on Wednesday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sent two commercially built lunar landers to space. The spacecraft are intended to touch down in the moon’s northern latitudes, conduct science experiments and test equipment.