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By Aila Slisco and Anna Commander
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Multiple airports in Florida were temporarily placed under a ground stop after a massive SpaceX Starship rocket exploded in flight on Thursday night, according to the National Airspace System.
Why It Matters
Flights were halted or delayed in many of the Sunshine State's major airports due to space "debris" caused by the SpaceX failure. Florida's Miami International Airport (MIA), Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) and Orlando International Airport (MCO) all were impacted, although the ground stops were lifted by around 8 p.m. Eastern Time.
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"During Starship's ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost," SpaceX said in a post to X, formerly Twitter. "Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses."
"We will review the data from today's flight test to better understand root cause," the post continued. "As always, success comes from what we learn, and today's flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship's reliability."
What To Know
In a statement emailed to Newsweek, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson said that the agency would be "requiring SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation" due to the explosion during the eighth test flight of Starship, which launched from Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas.
This marked the second consecutive test flight that ended in Starship—the largest space launch system ever built—exploding in flight. Following the previous failure, in January, SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said that there would be "a lot of things you're going to learn" from the destruction of the spacecraft.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk had not publicly commented on the Starship explosion at the time of publication, although he posted about the "launch attempt" on X shortly before it occurred.
What People Are Saying
Huot, commenting on the failure during a livestream of the launch: "Unfortunately, this happened last time too. So, we've got some practice at this now ... The primary reason we do these flight tests is to learn. We have some more to learn about this vehicle, but we're going to be right back here in the not-too-distant future and we're going to get a ship to space."
Democratic strategist Chris D. Jackson, in a post to X: "Another one of Elon Musk's taxpayer-funded Starship rockets just exploded—AGAIN. How many billions are we wasting on this failure factory? Everything Musk touches blows up, catches fire, or crashes—including the Trump Administration."
Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, on X: "So nice to know that Musk's failed SoaceX [sic] starship rocket that exploded tonight has stopped all flights into multiple FL airports. Oh and Soace [sic] X gets multiple federal contracts."
What Happens Next
Commercial flight operations returned to normal in Florida shortly after the SpaceX explosion on Thursday. The next Starship test flight was previously expected to take place as early as April, although the exact timing of the flight is unclear.
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