ELON Musk’s Starship rocket reportedly exploded just minutes into its seventh test flight in a dramatic mid-air failure.
Incredible footage shows glowing debris raining down across the sky after the 400ft behemoth launched from Boca Chica, southern Texas, on Thursday.
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The spacecraft was supposed to soar across the Gulf of Mexico from Texas on a near loop – similar to previous test flights.
SpaceX had packed it with 10 dummy satellites for practice at releasing them.
It was the first flight with this new and upgraded spacecraft.
But while the rocket’s booster performed flawlessly – making a successful return and being caught between two giant mechanical arms at the launchpad – the rocket itself vanished.
The thrill of the catch quickly turned into disappointment for not only the company, but the crowds gathered along the southern tip of Texas.
Crews lost contact with the Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket in the world.
The company’s livestream host confirmed the worst: “At this point in time, we can confirm we did lose the ship.
“It looks like we lost contact a little under eight and a half minutes into the flight.”
Confirming the explosion, SpaceX wrote on X: “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn.
“Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause.”
As the rocket disintegrated in the sky, glowing debris rained down, forcing nearby air traffic to reroute.
Aircraft were diverting away from the area where the debris soared through the atmosphere.
The last data received from Starship indicated the rocket had reached an altitude of 90 miles, with a velocity of 13,245 mph, before contact was lost.
SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said: “It was great to see a booster come down, but we are obviously bummed out about ship.”
He added that it would take time to analyze the data and determine what went wrong.
Elon Musk’s space company had hoped this test flight would mark a step forward in its goal to build a fully reusable spacecraft capable of carrying humans to Mars.
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He plans to launch actual Starlinks on Starships before moving on to other satellites and, eventually, crews.
The tech boss himself tweeted ahead of liftoff: “Every Starship launch is one more step closer towards Mars.”
The Starship prototype had been heavily modified since its last test flight in November 2023.
SpaceX had also made upgrades to the booster “catch” tower, which had been damaged during the previous test.
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