SpaceX's seventh test flight of its marquee rocket, Starship, ended with an unexpected fireworks display. That is, the rocket exploded in the Atlantic Ocean, raining a brilliant stream of debris into the Earth's atmosphere.
It's unclear what caused the explosion, but the event was captured on video by people on the ground and forced planes to divert to avoid superheated pieces of falling rocketry.
The Starship launched from SpaceX's Starbase in Texas at 4:37 pm local time on Thursday. The company's Mechazilla tower managed to catch Starship's large (233-foot-tall, or 71-meter) Super Heavy booster rocket, a calling card of SpaceX's bid to make spaceflight a more cost-effective and sustainable endeavor.
SpaceX lost telemetry with the vehicle before the burn phase ended. It happened about 8.5 minutes into the flight. “Initial data indicates a fire developed in the rear of the ship, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” according to a SpaceX release.
In other words, the upper stage of the rocket dramatically exploded in flight. The footage of the explosion and its aftermath looked like something out of science fiction: bright orange-yellow streaks of light streaking across the sky like so many alien spacecraft might do. Observers on the ground in Turks and Caicos and passengers aboard cruise ships in the Caribbean Sea captured the dramatic footage.
Here's the exact moment Ship 33 experienced a RUD. https://t.co/in2nZBWNV8 pic.twitter.com/iI7DtLiZlE
— Felix Space Time (@Space_Time3) January 16, 2025
But the exploding end of the rocket is not just a light show. The Federal Aviation Administration said it “briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where the space vehicle debris fell,” where the Starship debris created a “dangerous area for on falling lips.” Flight radar trackers showed several aircraft facing east of Turks and Caicos at the time of the explosion.
CNBC reported that the FAA has not received any reports of injuries or property damage, although flights were delayed and diverted as a result of the explosion. American Airlines told CNBC that it diverted less than 10 flights, while Delta had four flights diverted. According to flight tracking sites, at least one cargo jet reversed course and one Spirit Airlines flight changed its track. The excitement is understandable—no one wants to fly an airliner through rocket debris.
— andres (@_thatonedolphin) January 17, 2025
“Starship flew within its designated launch corridor – as all US launches do to protect the public on land, in the water and in the air,” the SpaceX release added. “Any remaining pieces of debris fall into the designated hazard area.”
On X—the social media platform owned by Musk—the multi-billionaire said that “the initial indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship's engine firewall that was large enough to build up a pressure that beyond the capacity of the vent .” Musk added that nothing about the flight path of Flight 7 suggested that the next Starship launch would have to be delayed last February.
On the ground, the seventh flight of the Starship was successful. The Super Heavy rocket booster successfully caught and secured the Mechazilla tower's Super Heavy rocket booster like a chopstick. Skyward, the seventh flight was a disappointment. That's what you call it when your rocket explodes and rains metal back down to Earth. But SpaceX will take it in stride. “Success comes from what we learn, and this flight test will help us improve the reliability of Starship as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary,” the company said.
In this regard, Australian carrier Qantas has had to delay several flights between Australia and South Africa in recent weeks due to warnings of potential space debris related to the SpaceX launch, as reported in The Guardian.
This latest incident could prompt a lengthy FAA inquiry. We've seen this before: Last year, SpaceX had to implement more than one dozens of corrective actions after an FAA investigation into its second Starship flight, in November 2023, among other investigations caused by tests gone awry.
The company is undoubtedly making progress when it comes to flying reusable rockets. Starship is a solid launch vehicle—as proven by NASA investing in Starship for its Artemis program to return humans to the Moon.
But SpaceX has blown past its tentative goals are to bring people to Mars by 2022 and fly a billionaire and a number of artists around the Moon (2023). As reported by Inverse, 2025 is the earliest Elon Musk says a colony could be established on Mars, with habitation on the dry, cold, and dusty world by the end of the decade. The tick of the clock, Mr. Musk.
