Starship Flight Breaks Up

SpaceX lost contact with its unmanned Starship rocket minutes after launch on Thursday, as the spacecraft lost altitude and several engines. Starship lifted off successfully at 6:30pm ET in Texas, ABC News reports, but started to spin out of control nine minutes into the test flight, and several engines flamed out. In January, a Starship on the seventh test flight had exploded after launch, sending flaming debris crashing to the Turks and Caicos and into the Atlantic Ocean. "Unfortunately this happened last time too, so we have some practice at this now," flight commentator Dan Huot said at the launch site, per the AP.

This time, airports in Orlando, Palm Beach, Miami, and Fort Lauderdale were put under ground stops because of concern over space launch debris. SpaceX had ended its video feed of the launch without saying where the spacecraft was or where its debris might hit. Before the video feed was cut off, it showed the spacecraft tumbling, per CNN. Livestream data indicated that just two of Starship's six engines were working. Communications ended around the same point as the last breakup. People in Florida and islands in the Caribbean and Atlantic reported seeing a huge debris cloud. (More SpaceX stories.)