SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Fails Again: Explodes Minutes After Launch SpaceX’s Starship rocket has exploded again during launch. The rocket exploded minutes after liftoff from Texas on Thursday.
The flight was the second test flight of the year for the Mars rocket program. With this, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has suffered two failures in three months.
Videos on social media show debris from the Starship strewn across the sky near South Florida and the Bahamas. The Guardian reported that the crash occurred when the rocket’s engine stalled and spun out of control.
The company’s seventh Starship flight ended in an explosion just last month. The series of failures has reportedly hit Musk’s plans, which he had hoped to ramp up this year.
But a few minutes later, SpaceX’s livestream video showed the upper part of the Starship spinning in space. A view of the rocket’s engines showed several of its engines shut down, and the company confirmed that contact with the rocket had been lost.
“Unfortunately, this has happened before. So it’s a bit of a rehearsal,” SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said on the livestream. There were no astronauts on the rocket. SpaceX shut down the livestream shortly after launch and did not provide any information about where the debris fell.
The company said its team was coordinating with safety officials and would review flight data to determine the cause of the explosion. “We learned from the success and today’s flight will provide additional lessons to improve the reliability of Starship,” the company added.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suspended commercial flights at Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Orlando airports until at least 8 p.m. (EST) after debris was scattered across the Caribbean. Flights around the Turks and Caicos Islands were also diverted.
According to The Guardian, the administration has launched an investigation into the incident. SpaceX will need to determine the cause of the failure and seek approval from the agency before flying Starship again.
The rocket exploded in space eight minutes into its January flight. Debris was seen strewn across the Caribbean islands at the time. The company said the explosion was caused by a fire near the rocket’s liquid oxygen tank. At the time, the administration temporarily halted commercial flights and ordered SpaceX to investigate. SpaceX later said it had changed the fuel lines and fuel temperature to avoid the launch.