Jan. 16 (UPI) — A SpaceX Starship’s upper stage exploded minutes after launch from Texas on Thursday, and the rocket was declared a “loss” in the seventh test flight of the heavy-lift spacecraft. The mission was unmanned.
“Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted on X about the incident.
Videos on social media appear to show the upper stage of the craft exploding over the Caribbean near the Turks and Caicos, sending flaming streams of brightly colored debris toward Earth, shining against the dusky sky. The fireballs likely were pieces of debris burning as they re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, officials said.
It was not clear where the debris landed.
“We can confirm that we did lose the ship,” senior manager of quality systems engineering Kate Tice said on the SpaceX live feed about 24 minutes after the launch. SpaceX said it lost contact with the ship at 8 minutes, 24 seconds into the flight.
A similar incident occurred on the second test launch of the Starship last year.
The Starship was carrying a batch of satellite simulators designed to mimic the next generation of Starlink satellites, which are expected to be bigger and heavier. This was the seventh of 10 planned Starship test flights.
SpaceX was successful Thursday in catching Starship’s returning fuel booster stage at 6 minutes 56 seconds after launch. It did so with a pair of mechanical arms on the launch tower that the company refers to as “chopsticks.”
The company launched the Starship on Thursday from SpaceX’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates commercial spaceflight, said in a statement that it had “briefly slowed and diverted aircraft around the area where space vehicle debris was falling,” The New York Times reported.