A SpaceX Starship rocket broke apart in space minutes after launch from Texas on Thursday, forcing airline flights over the Gulf of Mexico to change their trajectory to avoid falling debris and delaying the launch program. Elon Musk’s flagship rocket.
SpaceX Mission Control lost contact with the newly upgraded Starship, carrying its first simulated but uncrewed satellite test payload, eight minutes after liftoff from its South Texas rocket facility at 5:38 p.m. ET.
Video shot by Reuters showed balls of orange light streaking across the sky above the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, leaving trails of smoke behind. “We lost all communications with the ship, which basically tells us we had an anomaly with the upper stage,” said SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot, confirming minutes later that the ship had been lost .
The last time a spacecraft upper stage failed was in March last year as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, but a SpaceX accident has rarely caused widespread disruptions to air traffic.
Flights forced to divert
Dozens of commercial flights were diverted to other airports or changed their route to avoid possible debris, according to flight tracking site FlightRadar24. Departures from airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, were also delayed by approximately 45 minutes, the statement added.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which regulates private launch activities, said it briefly slowed and diverted planes around the area where the space debris was falling, but that normal operations had since resumed.
The FAA regularly closes airspace for space launches and reentries, but it can create a “debris response zone” to prevent aircraft from entering if the space vehicle experiences an anomaly outside the initially closed zone.
SpaceX CEO Musk posted a video on X showing the debris field and said: “Success is uncertain, but fun is guaranteed!” »
The failure came a day after Blue Origin, the space company of Amazon billionaire founder Jeff Bezos, successfully launched its giant New Glenn rocket into orbit for the first time.
Larger version of the predecessor
The Starship’s upper stage, two meters taller than previous versions, was a “next-generation craft with significant improvements,” SpaceX said in a mission description before the test. It was scheduled to make a controlled water landing in the Indian Ocean about an hour after launching from Texas.
Musk said a preliminary assessment of the failure showed that an internal leak of liquid oxygen had built up pressure and led to the rocket breaking apart.
The FAA is likely to open an investigation into an accident that grounds Starship – as the agency has done in the past – and examine whether debris from the rocket’s mid-flight explosion fell on populated areas or outside of Starship’s predetermined danger zone.
The accident threatens to derail Musk’s goal of launching at least 12 Starship tests this year, depending on how quickly SpaceX can implement fixes and whether the FAA opens an investigation into the accident.
Musk criticizes the FAA
“Nothing so far suggests pushing the next launch beyond next month,” Musk said.
The billionaire, who was appointed to a new cost-cutting role by new US President-elect Donald Trump, has repeatedly criticized the FAA for its excesses and politically motivated decisions.
