SpaceX’s Starship explodes in second failure for Musk’s Mars program

SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft exploded on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, dooming an attempt to deploy mock satellites in the second consecutive failure this year for Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.

Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship’s breakup in space, which occurred shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX livestream of the mission showed.

The failure comes just more than a month after the company’s seventh Starship flight also ended in an explosive failure. The back-to-back mishaps occurred in early mission phases that SpaceX has easily surpassed previously, indicating serious setbacks for a program Musk has sought to speed up this year.

The 403ft (123-meter) rocket system had lifted off at about 6.30pm ET (2300 GMT) from SpaceX’s sprawling Boca Chica, Texas, rocket facilities, with its Super Heavy first-stage booster returning to land as planned.

But minutes later, SpaceX’s livestream showed the Starship upper stage spinning in space, while a visualization of the rocket’s engines showed multiple engines shut down before the company confirmed it had lost contact with the ship.

“Unfortunately, this happened last time, too, so we’ve got some practice now,” Dan Huot, a SpaceX spokesperson, said on the livestream.

The rocket wasn’t carrying any astronauts. SpaceX stopped the livestream shortly after the launch and gave no indication where debris would fall.

SpaceX posted online that “the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost”. The company said its team was coordinating with safety officials and it would review flight data to understand the root cause of the explosion, adding: “Success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship’s reliability.”

As debris scattered over parts of the Caribbean, the Federal Aviation Administration briefly issued ground stops of commercial flights at the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Orlando airports because of “space launch debris” until at least 8pm ET. Flights were also diverted around Turks and Caicos.

The FAA said it had opened a mishap investigation into the incident, and would require SpaceX to examine the failure’s cause and get the agency’s sign-off before Starship can fly again.

The failure of Starship’s first attempt to launch since exploding in space on 16 January puts a dent in Musk’s development vision. He aims to build a rocket capable of sending bigger batches of satellites to space as well as humans to the moon and Mars.

The Starship failure in January ended eight minutes into flight when the rocket exploded in space, raining debris over Caribbean islands. The explosion was caused by a fire that ignited near the ship’s liquid oxygen tank. At the time, the FAA temporarily grounded commercial flights and ordered SpaceX to carry out an investigation. SpaceX said it had since made changes to the fuel lines and fuel temperature.