SpaceX's latest test flight of its massive Starship rocket ended in another explosion, just two months after a similar incident sent debris raining down on the Turks and Caicos.
The rocket, launched from Texas on Thursday, lost contact mere minutes into the flight as it broke apart over Florida.
The 403-foot (123-meter) rocket successfully launched, with SpaceX's giant mechanical arms catching the first-stage booster back at the pad. However, as the spacecraft began its eastward trajectory, engines on the upper stage shut down, causing it to go into an out-of-control spin. Contact was lost less than 10 minutes into the flight, just as the spacecraft reached nearly 90 miles (150 kilometers) in altitude, before it was supposed to deploy four mock satellites.
The wreckage from the explosion was visible over Florida, near Cape Canaveral, though it remains unclear whether the spacecraft's self-destruct system had been activated. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said that SpaceX must investigate the cause of the accident.
Flight operations were temporarily halted at Orlando International Airport due to space debris in the area, though no major injuries or damage were reported.
This flight was intended to be a practice run for future missions, including NASA's plan to use Starship to land astronauts on the moon. The spacecraft was carrying mock Starlink satellites, meant to be deployed in space before falling back to Earth.
While the booster was successfully recovered at the pad, the spacecraft itself failed to complete its mission, making it a less successful test than previous flights. SpaceX has already made improvements to the spacecraft after the last test failure and plans to continue refining Starship for future launches.
Despite the setback, SpaceX remains focused on its ambitious goal of using Starship for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
