SpaceX Starship explodes during test flight, leaving airlines scrambling to divert flights

SpaceX’s seventh test flight of the Starship rocket ended in an unintended fireworks show. That is, the rocket exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, sending a brilliant stream of debris through the Earth’s atmosphere.

It’s unclear what caused the explosion, but the event was captured on video by people on the ground and forced planes to divert course to avoid superheated pieces of falling rockets.

Starship launched from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas at 4:37 p.m. local time on Thursday. The company’s Mechazilla Tower managed to catch the massive (233 feet or 71 meters tall) Starship Super Heavy launch vehicle, the calling card of SpaceX’s attempt to make spaceflight a more cost-effective and sustainable endeavor.

SpaceX lost telemetry with the vehicle before the burn stage was complete. This happened about 8.5 minutes into the flight. “Initial reports indicate that a fire occurred in the rear of the craft, leading to a rapid unplanned disassembly,” SpaceX said in a statement.

In other words, the rocket’s upper stage dramatically exploded in flight. The footage of the explosion and its aftermath looks like something out of science fiction: bright orange-yellow streaks of light streak across the sky, as so many alien spacecraft might do. Observers on the ground in Turks and Caicos and passengers on board cruise ships in the Caribbean captured the dramatic footage.

Here is the exact moment Ship 33 suffered a RUD. https://t.co/in2nZBWNV8 pic.twitter.com/iI7DtLiZlE

— Felix Space Time (@Space_Time3) January 16, 2025

But the rocket’s explosive end wasn’t just a light show. The Federal Aviation Administration said it “briefly slowed and diverted the aircraft around the area where spacecraft debris was falling,” with the Starship wreckage creating a “falling debris hazard zone.” Flight trackers showed several aircraft heading east from Turks and Caicos around the time of the explosion.

CNBC reported that the FAA had not received any reports of injuries or property damage, although flights were delayed and diverted as a result of the explosion. American Airlines told CNBC it had fewer than 10 diverted flights, while Delta had four diverted. According to flight tracking sites, at least one cargo plane turned around and one Spirit Airlines flight changed course. The chaos is understandable – no one wants a passenger plane to fly through missile debris.

pic.twitter.com/v1kyg6YtTg

— andres (@_thatonedolphin) January 17, 2025

“Starship flew within the designated launch corridor – as all US launches do, to protect the public on the ground, in the water and in the air,” SpaceX’s statement added. “Any surviving pieces of debris would fall into the designated danger zone.”

On X – the social media platform owned by Musk – the multi-billionaire stated that “preliminary indication is that we have an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship’s engine bulkhead, which is large enough to create a pressure in excess of the capacity of the vent. .” Musk added that nothing about the way Flight 7 unfolded suggests that the next Starship launch will have to be pushed back to February.

On the ground, the seventh Starship flight was a success. The stick-like arms of the Mechazilla turret successfully grabbed and secured the Super Heavy rocket booster from the air. To heaven, the seventh flight was a failure. That’s what you call it when your rocket explodes and rains metal back down to Earth. But SpaceX will take it in stride. “Success comes from what we learn, and this flight test will help us improve the reliability of Starship as SpaceX strives to make life multiplanetary,” the company said in a statement.

Accordingly, Australian carrier Qantas has had to delay several flights between Australia and South Africa in recent weeks due to warnings about potential space debris associated with SpaceX launches, as reported in The Guardian.

This latest incident could prompt a lengthy FAA investigation. We’ve seen it before: last year SpaceX had to deploy over a a dozen corrective actions following an FAA investigation into its second Starship flight in November 2023, among other investigations sparked by failed tests.

The company is undoubtedly making progress when it comes to flying reusable rockets. Starship is a solid launch vehicle – as evidenced by NASA’s investment in Starship for the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon.

But SpaceX has blown past its tentative goals of getting humans to Mars in 2022. and fly with a billionaire and a handful of artists around the moon (2023). As reported by Inverse, 2025. is the earliest Elon Musk has previously said a Mars colony could be established, with settlement on the dry, cool and dusty world by the end of the decade. The clock is ticking, Mr. Musk.