SpaceX Starship explosion again grounds flights

The incident, later blamed on an “energetic event” in the vehicle’s rear, led to four airports in Florida – Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Orlando – halting flights for 80 minutes as fragments of Starship streaked through the sky like fireworks, visible as far away as the Caribbean and Pennsylvania.

“Following the anomaly, SpaceX teams immediately began coordination with the FAA, ATO (air traffic control) and other safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses,” the company said in a statement.

“Any surviving debris would have fallen within the pre-planned Debris Response Area.”

However, the company did manage to successfully perform only the third “chopstick-style” catch of the first-stage booster, effectively making it reusable.

The company’s founder, Elon Musk, called the latest failure a “minor setback” despite it closely mirroring the result of the previous blast-off in January.

“Rockets are hard. Not easy, making life multi-planetary,” Musk said. “But we learnt a good amount in building the new ship design and the flight.”

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Starship’s eighth flight test lifted off from Starbase in Texas at 5:30pm CT on Thursday, 6 March.

Roughly three minutes into the flight, the Super Heavy booster separated from its upper stage before returning to its launch pad to be caught for the second time in a row.

Starship continued onwards on its planned journey to space before an unknown incident led to the loss of several Raptor engines.

Footage from the livestream showed the upper stage spinning before communication was lost nine minutes and 30 seconds after lift-off.

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

Afterwards, SpaceX doubled down on its philosophy that failures during test flights are part of its natural development cycle.

“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability,” it said.

“We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests.”

Starship is the collective name for the SpaceX Super Heavy booster rocket and Starship spacecraft, destined to one day fly humans to Mars.

Testing began in April 2023 when the spacecraft failed to reach orbit but culminated in the first stage incredibly returning to the original launch pad and being caught by mechanical arms in October last year.

Its previous test flight, though, which ended in a similar failure, saw SpaceX radically overhaul the vehicle’s design.

Alterations debuting on flight seven included adding new sensors to the launch site to make the pincer-style catches more accurate and redesigning the propulsion system and heat shield.

Separately, on Saturday, SpaceX revealed that a fuel leak had caused a Falcon 9 booster to be destroyed earlier this month.

The booster caught fire after landing on a droneship before toppling over following a Starlink launch.

Qantas in January revealed it had been forced to delay flights from Sydney to Johannesburg to avoid SpaceX rocket debris burning up in the atmosphere.

The Flying Kangaroo said the timing of recent launches had often changed at late notice but that it had been in touch with the space firm to minimise future disruption, which can last up to six hours.

The carrier currently flies up to six times a week between the NSW capital and South Africa using its 485-capacity A380s, in what is one of its most popular services.

SpaceX often targets the Southern Indian Ocean due to its remoteness, but the stretch of water lies under Qantas’ flight path.