SpaceX’s latest Starship test ended in a dramatic mid-air explosion Thursday, sending fiery debris streaking across the skies near Florida and the Bahamas.
The spacecraft lost control minutes after launch from Texas, marking the second consecutive failure this year and triggering an FAA investigation.
Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship broke up in space shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX live stream of the mission showed.
One video shared online shows an urgent safety issue, as SpaceX workers are instructed to “get back in the cockpit.”
The first reaction seems to be one of awe and surprise, as the person recording the video proclaims “wow! That is quite the….” before cutting off.
If you’re keeping count, that’s four Starship explosions out of eight attempts—an impressive failure rate.
undefined Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) March 7, 2025
Elon’s philosophy seems to be the same for everything: blow it up, waste billions, and call it innovation. pic.twitter.com/jjvgIsWipY
The failure of the eighth Starship test comes just over a month after the seventh also ended in an explosive failure. The back-to-back mishaps occurred in early mission phases that SpaceX has easily surpassed previously, a setback for a program Musk had sought to speed up this year.
The 403-foot (123-meter) rocket system is central to Musk's plan to send humans to Mars as soon as the turn of the decade.
“Energetic event”
The Federal Aviation Administration briefly issued ground stops at the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Orlando airports because of "space launch debris." It said it had opened a mishap investigation into the incident.
The rocket lifted off about 6:30 p.m. ET (2330 GMT) from SpaceX's sprawling Boca Chica, Texas, rocket facilities. The Super Heavy first stage booster flew back to Earth as planned and was successfully grabbed in midair by a SpaceX crane.
But minutes later, SpaceX's live stream showed the Starship upper stage spinning in space, while a visualization of the rocket's engines showed multiple engines shut down. Then the company said it had lost contact with the ship, and announcers immediately drew a connection to the previous flight.
"Unfortunately this happened last time too, so we've got some practice now," SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said on the live stream.
In a statement late Thursday, SpaceX said Starship experienced an "energetic event" in its aft section, which resulted in the loss of several engines.
"This in turn led to a loss of attitude control and ultimately a loss of communications with Starship," the statement said. "Final contact with Starship came approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds after liftoff."
SpaceX said there were no toxic materials among the debris.
The Starship failure in January ended eight minutes into flight when the rocket exploded, raining debris over Caribbean islands and causing minor damage to a car in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The FAA, which regulates private rocket launches, said its investigation would require SpaceX to examine the failure's cause and get the agency's sign-off before Starship can fly again.
The FAA last month approved SpaceX's launch license for Thursday's test flight while its investigation into the company's previous Starship failure remained open. In doing so, the FAA said it had reviewed SpaceX's license application and early details from the company's mishap investigation before determining that Starship's eighth flight could proceed.
Starship was aiming to make nearly a full orbit around Earth and re-enter over the Indian Ocean for a splashdown, simulating a landing sequence that SpaceX wants to soon carry out on land as a key next phase of the rocket's development.
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