Everything started well; the rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas at 5:30 pm CT, propelled by the successful lighting of all 33 of the Super Heavy booster’s Raptor engines.

Around two minutes later, the booster separated from the upper stage of Starship – and, for the third time, was successfully caught by the metal arms of “Mechazilla” using the “chopstick” maneuver.

It was mere minutes later – and less than 10 minutes into the total flight time – when things started to go wrong.

“Prior to the end of the ascent burn, an energetic event in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines,” explained SpaceX in a statement. “This in turn led to a loss of attitude control and ultimately a loss of communications with Starship. Final contact with Starship came approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds after liftoff.”

On social media platform X, the company called it a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”. That’s the polite way of putting it – in more explicit terms, the upper portion of the rocket exploded.

Videos of the resulting debris have been widely shared on social media, with CNN reporting that the fall of the flaming remnants of the rocket could be seen over the Caribbean and as far as Florida.

“Any surviving debris would have fallen within the pre-planned Debris Response Area,” said SpaceX. “There are no toxic materials present in the debris and no significant impacts expected to occur to marine species or water quality.”

The last time Starship exploded, debris ended up landing on the Turks and Caicos Islands, although no injuries were reported.

The explosion and debris also triggered the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to temporarily halt a number of flights departing from nearby airports, as well as slowing down traffic already in the air outside of the Debris Response Area.

It also means that SpaceX will now need to conduct an investigation into what happened, as required by the FAA if the company wants to get another rocket up in the air.

“A mishap investigation is designed to enhance public safety, determine the root cause of the event, and identify corrective actions to avoid it from happening again. The FAA will be involved in every step of the SpaceX-led mishap investigation process and must approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions,” said the FAA in a statement. 

“A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety.”

SpaceX has said that it will work with the FAA to carry out such an investigation, and “implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests.”

“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability.”

And we’d better hope it does, because Starship’s got a lot riding on it – namely, humanity’s return to the Moon. With the future of NASA’s Space Launch System looking uncertain, Starship could present a viable, economic alternative; the rocket and its booster are intended to be reusable, although that prospect soon goes out the window if you can’t keep your rocket from blowing up.

That’s not to say there’s no hope at all. The explosion might make it seem otherwise, but this test wasn’t necessarily a complete failure – after all, it didn’t blow up as quickly as the last one did, and Super Heavy survived too. SpaceX had made a number of upgrades to Starship following the failure of the previous test flight, and saw this flight as an opportunity to see how they fared.

It’s safe to say, however, that this is a situation where there are no guarantees.