Starship’s seventh test flight ended in an explosion when the upper stage of the vehicle “saw random disintegration during its burn” over the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted a video of the event, with the debris spreading and lighting up the sky. During the company’s webcast, Dan Huot from SpaceX’s communications team said they “saw the engines lose power on telemetry” at the end of the ascent burn and that they eventually lost contact with the ship, which the company calls the vehicle’s upper stage. SpaceX said in a tweet that it would continue to review test data to understand the cause of the explosion.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued an advisory to pilots after the incident, warning them of falling debris in certain areas. SpaceX said before the test that it aimed to “launch a new generation ship with significant improvements” and was to conduct the first Starship payload test with the help of 10 Starlink simulators.
Despite the burning of the Starship’s upper stage, the test was still partially successful. The ship’s Raptor engines ignited during the burn before the crew lost contact about 8 minutes into the flight. SpaceX was also able to retrieve the Super Heavy booster, holding the vehicle’s first stage with mechanical arms on its Starbase launch tower.