The latest SpaceX Starship rocket had a rough test flight on Thursday, breaking apart within nine minutes of its launch.
It was the seventh test flight of the Starship rocket that launched from the “Starbase” facility near Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday and lasted nine minutes before SpaceX lost communication.
“We can confirm that we did lose the ship,” SpaceX senior manager of quality systems engineering Kate Tice said.
“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause. With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability,” SpaceX said in a post on X.
Not long after, social media users were quick to post videos of what appeared as fireballs in the sky near the Caribbean islands. Take a look:
According to NBC News, the Federal Aviation Administration had issued a warning to pilots about the “dangerous area for falling debris of rocket Starship.” Various flights above the Caribbean were diverted.
“The FAA briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling. Normal operations have resumed,” the FAA said in a statement.
“There were no people on board the Starship flight. However, Elon Musk’s company was flying 10 ‘Starlink simulators’ in the rocket’s payload bay and planned to attempt to deploy the satellite-like objects once in space,” noted NBC News. “This would have been a key test of the rocket’s capabilities, as SpaceX needs Starship to deploy its much larger and heavier upcoming generation of Starlink satellites.”
“While SpaceX didn’t specify what the Starlink simulators were made of, mass simulators are commonly used in rocket vehicle development and are often simple constructions of metal or concrete that weigh roughly the same as the object in question,” it added.
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