SpaceX’s eighth test flight of its Starship rocket ended in a late-stage explosion Thursday night, leaving a barrage of blazing shrapnel visible in the skies that disrupted air traffic.
The explosion marks the second unsuccessful launch for Elon Musk’s space technology company this year, after the same vessel malfunctioned on Jan. 16 due to an unexpected misfiring about eight minutes into the launch.
For its latest test, Starship lifted off at 6:30 p.m. eastern time on Thursday, with no crew on board, from a SpaceX facility in Texas.
The rocket reached nearly 150 kilometres in altitude before it ran into trouble. Ground crews lost communication with the vessel about nine-and-a-half minutes after lift-off, SpaceX confirmed.
While the exact location where the rocket came down remains unclear, the company says it launched within a designated corridor to ensure the safety of the public on the ground, at sea and in the air, claiming that any surviving debris would have fallen within a “pre-planned debris response area” and that remnants were non-toxic and would not cause harm to marine or human life.
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Flights were temporarily grounded at Orlando International Airport as a result of the explosion.
“Our airport is currently under a Ground Stop due to space launch debris in the area,” the airport wrote on X at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday.
Images of debris re-entering the atmosphere over parts of Florida, the Bahamas and other Caribbean islands quickly began to surface online Thursday night.
Another video shows the view from a plane midflight.
After yet another failed launch, SpaceX wrote on X that “Success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability,” adding that it is conducting an investigation in order to implement “corrective action” ahead of further tests.
Musk himself has not publicly commented on the latest launch.
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