SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft tumbled and exploded in space on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, dooming an attempt to deploy mock satellites in the second consecutive failure this year for Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.
Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship’s breakup in space, which occurred shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cutoff, a SpaceX live stream of the mission showed.
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Starship 8 debris pic.twitter.com/NseQxyEZWP
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Is that space X rocket disintegration #spacex pic.twitter.com/apEagPIqDB
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The failure comes just over a month after the company’s seventh Starship flight also ended in an explosive failure. The back-to-back mishaps occurred in early mission phases that SpaceX has easily surpassed previously, indicating serious setbacks for a program Musk has sought to speed up this year.
The 403-foot (123-meter) rocket system had lifted off at about 6:30 p.m. ET (2330 GMT) from SpaceX’s sprawling Boca Chica, Texas, rocket facilities, with its Super Heavy first stage booster returning back to land as planned.
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 before the company confirmed it had lost contact with the ship.
“Unfortunately this happened last time too, so we’ve got some practice now,” SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said on the live stream.
It was not immediately clear whether the explosion was caused by SpaceX’s automated flight termination system, which triggers when something on the rocket goes wrong. The ship showed signs of failure before its explosion.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued ground stops at Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Orlando airports because of “space launch debris” until at least 8 p.m. ET.
“During Starship’s ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost,” SpaceX said in a statement. “Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses.”
The Starship failure in January ended eight minutes into flight when the rocket exploded in space, raining debris over Caribbean islands and causing minor damage to a car in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
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