A starship rocket breaks up mid-flight, but SpaceX takes off again

SpaceX launched the seventh test flight of its Starship rocket on Thursday, but lost contact with the rocket's upper stage as it continues into space.

The company's webcast showed that data was transmitted from Starship about nine minutes after launch.

“We can confirm that we lost the ship,” said SpaceX senior manager of quality systems engineering, Kate Tice.

SpaceX said in a post on X that the ship broke up during ascent and that it would “continue to analyze data from today's flight test to better understand the cause.”

After the rocket loses contact, social media users posted pictures and videos of what appeared fireballs in the air near the Caribbean islands. Starship's launch path is taking it east of Texas, which means that the fireballs seem like debris from the rocket breaking apart and entering the atmosphere

Jet Blue Flight 353 from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which showed on the airline's website as bound for San Juan, Puerto Rico, had turned sharply west north of Turks and Caicos, nearly twice a hours after the flight and appeared to be returning to Fort Lauderdale, according to flight path site FlightAware. Spirit Flight 172 from Chicago O'Hare International Airport to San Juan also appeared to be circling in the area. Other aircraft, including cargo aircraft from FedEx it also seemed to be turning around.

The airlines and the FAA did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. As required for rocket launches, standard air traffic control advisories were in place.

Starship launched from SpaceX's private “Starbase” facility near Brownsville, Texas, shortly after 5:30 p.m. ET. A few minutes later, the “Super Heavy” booster of the rocket returned to land at the launch site, in SpaceX's the second successful “catch”. during flight. He did not catch the increase on the last flight.

There were no people on board the Starship. But, Elon MuskThe company was flying 10 “Starlink simulators” in the rocket's payload bay and planned to test the satellite-like objects once in space. This would have been a a major test of the rocket's capabilitiesbecause SpaceX needs Starship to deploy the larger and heavier generation of Starlink satellites.

Although SpaceX did not specify what the Starlink simulators were made of, large simulators are commonly used in rocket vehicle development and are often simple metal or concrete structures that are roughly the same size as that thing.

Before losing contact, Starship was poised to reach a location and then travel halfway around Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean about an hour after liftoff.

As with all previous flights, SpaceX aimed to push development further by further evaluating Starship's capabilities, including tests of its heat-resistant tiles and trajectory back to intense.

Starship is vital to the company's plans, even with what they have Valuation $350 billion and already a major player in the space industry.

Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on the Super Heavy lift, Starship stands 403 feet tall and is approximately 30 feet in diameter. SpaceX has flown the full Starship rocket system on six space flight tests so far from April 2023, at the end of the growing period.

The Super Heavy lift, which is 232 feet high, begins the rocket's journey into space. At its core are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust – about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA's Space Launch System rocket, which to be published for the first time in 2022.

The starship itself, at 171 feet tall, has six Raptor engines – three for use while in the Earth's atmosphere and three for operating in vacuum.

The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The entire system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant to launch.

The Starship flying on this release, identified as Ship 33, also represents a second generation version of the vehicle, called “Block 2.”

SpaceX noted that the “major updates” to this vehicle include changes to the flaps on the nose of the vehicle, a redesign of its propulsion system to increase performance, an improved flight computer, 30 cameras placed throughout the vehicle to monitor the rocket and a reinforced heat shield. .

In addition, the booster for this flight attempt features a reused Raptor engine. That engine flew through its fifth test flight last year.

The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to be a new way to fly cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multi-million dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA's Artemis lunar program.

– CNBC's Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.