Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program faced another setback on Thursday as SpaceX’s Starship exploded shortly after liftoff.
The 400-foot spacecraft, powered by 33 Raptor engines, launched at 6:30 p.m. ET from SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas.
However, about nine minutes into the flight, the rocket began to spin out of control, its engines failed, and mission control lost communication.
SpaceX later halted the video feed and described the event as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX announced that data from the test flight would be analyzed to determine the root cause of the failure.
“As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will provide valuable lessons to enhance Starship’s reliability,” the company stated.
This marks the second consecutive failed launch, following an earlier explosion that scattered Starship debris into the Atlantic Ocean just weeks prior.