By SpaceX said Thursday that its Starship space vehicle broke up during a flight meant to test the megarocket’s capabilities.
The rocket system’s upper stage appears to have disintegrated somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico or possibly the Caribbean Sea. Shortly after SpaceX said it lost touch with the spacecraft, videos emerged on social media showing debris streaming across the sky.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, shared a video of the debris on X, writing: “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”
Nobody was aboard Starship, which is still being tested for missions to the moon and beyond.
SpaceX’s seventh test flight of Starship started smoothly, with the rocket lifting off and its booster returning to land intact at the company’s “Starbase” launch site near Brownsville, Texas.
Problems began shortly thereafter, when SpaceX lost touch with Starship roughly nine minutes after liftoff. Kate Tice, SpaceX’s senior manager of quality systems engineering, said the company had lost the ship, and SpaceX wrote on X that it had experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday that it is “aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX Starship Flight 7 mission.”
Shortly afterward, the FAA said in an updated statement that it “briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling,” adding that normal operations have resumed.
A SpaceX video posted earlier Thursday showed that the planned trajectory for Starship was to go from the southern tip of Texas over the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula, then east near Cuba and across the Atlantic Ocean. Had the flight gone as planned, it would ultimately have splashed down in the Indian Ocean.
Starship is the most powerful rocket ever developed, measuring 400 feet tall. The rocket has two parts: a first-stage booster known as Super Heavy and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft.
The system is expected to play a crucial part in NASA’s efforts to return to the moon. The agency selected SpaceX to carry astronauts to the lunar surface during NASA’s planned Artemis III mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2027. Musk has also said Starship could be used for future missions to Mars.
Accidents are not uncommon during the testing of new rockets and spacecraft. SpaceX’s first attempt to launch Starship in 2023 ended in a fiery explosion a few minutes after liftoff. The incident triggered a monthslong safety review and drew scrutiny of the environmental consequences of launching rockets from the Gulf Coast of southern Texas.
Holly Hackman told NBC News that she was in Turks and Caicos walking on the beach with her boyfriend when they saw the debris begin streaming overhead and recorded video that she posted online.
“He thought it was aliens,” Hackman said. “We were out for a beach walk, and my boyfriend looked up and freaked out.”
