SpaceX’s Starship explodes during ascent on seventh test flight

The spacecraft’s seventh test flight ended in an explosion when the vehicle’s upper stage “experienced rapid, unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn” over the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX boss Elon Musk posted a video of the event, with debris sweeping overhead and lighting up the sky. Dan Huot from SpaceX’s communications team spoke during the company’s webcast said They “saw the engines fail based on telemetry” at the end of the ascent burn and that they ultimately lost contact with the ship, which the company describes as the vehicle’s upper stage. SpaceX said in one tweet that it will continue to review data from the test to understand the root cause of the explosion.

The Federal Aviation Administration has issued one advisory for pilots after the incident to warn them of falling debris in certain areas. SpaceX said before the test that it was intended to “launch a new-generation ship with significant upgrades” and conduct Starship’s first payload deployment test using 10 Starlink simulators.

Although the upper stage of the spacecraft burned down, the test was still partially successful. The ship’s Raptor engines fired up during the ascent before the ground team lost contact with the ship about eight minutes into the flight. SpaceX was also able to retrieve the Super Heavy carrier and capture the vehicle’s first stage with the mechanical arms on its Starbase launch tower.