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Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship rocket exploded 10 minutes into the latest flight test of the biggest rocket ever built.
The 400-foot-tall (123-meter) rocket lifted off smoothly from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. local time (11.30 p.m. GMT).
But just minutes after it separated from the Super Heavy booster Starship’s upper stage lost power in several engines. Footage showed it spinning down to Earth before the livestream of the doomed flight cut to black.
The explosion caused a large debris cloud near islands in the Caribbean and Atlantic, CNN reported.
The Federal Aviation Administration briefly halted flights until 8 p.m. ET due to “falling space debris” into some of Florida’s busiest airports, including Miami International Airport, and airports in Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Orlando.
After flights resumed, departures continued to be delayed by as much as 45 minutes.
The FAA also delayed flights from Philadelphia International Airport an average of 30 minutes for “space launch debris.”
SpaceX Starship megarocket explosion near The Bahamas during its 8th test flight. The booster landed successfully. The explosion disrupted air traffic over Florida because of “falling space debris.” #SpaceX #Rocket #Space pic.twitter.com/mArs70pDpG
— Sydney Welch (@SydWeather) March 7, 2025
SpaceX later confirmed that the Starship blew up in flight, calling it a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
“Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses,” the company said in a statement. “We will review the data from today’s flight test to better understand the root cause. As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship’s reliability.”
The flight test comes just six weeks after the last Starship launch, which ended in a fiery explosion over the Turks and Caicos Islands.
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SpaceX boss Elon Musk has pushed for a rapid testing schedule in order to speed up the development of Starship.
“Developmental testing by definition is unpredictable,” SpaceX said ahead of Thursday’s launch attempt.
“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.”
The eighth test flight was set to follow the same trajectory as the sixth Starship mission, which ended with the second-stage rocket splashing down in the Indian Ocean, as expected.
SpaceX named several new objectives that had never before been achieved for the latest mission, including the first-ever deployment of a payload into orbit. Four dummy Starlink satellites were set to be released during the 90-minute flight test.
Despite the failure of the upper stage, SpaceX was still able to catch the Super Heavy booster using the chopstick mechanism at the Starbase launch tower.
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The huge payload capacity of Starship means that it will be charged with delivering SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink satellites into orbit when operational, though the primary goal for the rocket is to conduct missions to Mars.
Musk has said he hopes to establish a permanent human colony on the Red Planet by 2050, with plans to build a fleet of thousands of Starship rockets in order ferry crews and cargo throughout the Solar System.
Musk, who has been slashing tens of thousands of federal jobs through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), also has plans to overhaul FAA operations with his SpaceX Starlink system, and reportedly aims to shoulder aside a current contract with Verizon.
A SpaceX engineer who also works as a DOGE volunteer reportedly threatened FAA employees with termination if they stand in the way of agency work by the company, which could lead to a lucrative federal contract.
Engineer Ted Malaska last month instructed employees at the FAA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to “immediately start work on a program to deploy thousands of SpaceX Starlink satellite terminals to support the national airspace system,” Bloomberg News reported.
