SpaceX conducted its eighth orbital test of the massive Starship rocket on Thursday from its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, achieving a bittersweet result. The launch, which took off around 5:30 pm (2330 GMT), saw the booster stage skillfully captured by the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms—a notable success. But the upper stage met its demise in a big way, exploding mid-air for the second time in a row, same as the January 16 test. A user posted a video on X that looks like it exploded over the Bahamas, but the exact location remains unknown.
SpaceX’s Dan Huot said, “We lost contact with the spacecraft; unfortunately, this happened in the last test”. The company later said they would go through the flight data to determine what went wrong and that every test is in progress. “Learning from these flights is how we’ll refine Starship’s dependability,” they noted.
This latest mishap has amplified questions about Elon Musk’s sway over U.S. space endeavours, especially as he juggles leadership roles in SpaceX and government-related initiatives tied to former President Donald Trump. Despite not wrapping up the January test, the FAA-approved launch left debris all over the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the cleanup has begun. Critics are saying this is a sign of regulatory neglect, and it’s all because of Musk.
SpaceX had rolled out enhancements for this mission to bolster the upper stage’s performance and had ambitions to release Starlink simulators—stand-ins meant to replicate satellite drops before disintegrating upon re-entry. Yet, with the upper stage spiralling out of control before the livestream cut off about 40 minutes after liftoff, its ultimate fate remains a mystery.
At 403 feet (123 meters), Starship is the world’s mightiest rocket and the cornerstone of Musk’s dream to settle humans on Mars. NASA also focuses on a tailored Starship version for the Artemis program, aiming to put boots back on the lunar surface this decade. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s plan typically involves aiming the upper stage for a controlled splashdown, targeting the Indian Ocean near Australia’s western coast, though this test veered off course. Musk is causing more debate after a Bloomberg report said a SpaceX engineer threatened to fire FAA staff if they didn’t speed up on a Starlink terminal project. SpaceX denied the story as “false”. On the bright side, this is the third time they caught a booster – a big step towards a fully reusable rocket system, despite challenges.