We’ve wrapped up our live coverage for the day. Read more about the explosion of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft during its eighth flight test here, or scroll through the posts below to relive the event as it unfolded.

SpaceX has long embraced an engineering and development philosophy it calls “rapid iterative development.”

The goal has been to rapidly build Starship prototypes and put them on the launchpad with a willingness to blow them up. That approach was readily apparent in the early days of SpaceX’s operations in South Texas, when the company routinely exploded preliminary Starship spacecraft during “hop tests” that didn’t go exactly as hoped.

What’s different about the last Starship mission in January and today’s flight — both of which were test flights of SpaceX’s integrated Starship system, missions that involve sending a Starship vehicle toward space atop a Super Heavy rocket booster — is where and how the debris fell.

While the first test flight of Starship and Super Heavy blew up a launchpad at SpaceX’s Starbase facilities in 2023, January’s Flight 7 and today’s Flight 8 both allowed Starship to travel out over the Atlantic and Caribbean before exploding near populated islands.

Turks and Caicos is still dealing with the January explosion. Residents have told CNN they continue to find debris and wonder about the environmental impacts. Detritus also struck a car in South Caicos. (There were no reported injuries.)

Today’s mishap raises even more questions: Why did the FAA, which licenses commercial rocket launches, allow Starship to launch before the agency’s investigation into the Flight 7 mishap was complete? Should experimental rockets be allowed to fly over populated areas? And where, exactly, did the debris from Flight 8 fall?

The FAA and Space X did not immediately respond to requests for comment. SpaceX does not typically respond to questions from journalists.

SpaceX just posted a statement about tonight’s test flight.

According to the post, there was an “energetic event in the aft (or rear) portion of Starship.”

The statement does not explain what is meant by “energetic event.” But notably, January’s test flight ended in an explosion because, as SpaceX previously said, a fire broke out in the aft part of the vehicle during that mission.

The company previously disclosed that it had made upgrades to the Starship spacecraft that flew today, installing vents and a “purge system” that can use nitrogen to help flush out fuel leaks and make the aft area less flammable, according to SpaceX.

It’s not clear whether those upgrades didn’t work as expected or if the “energetic event” SpaceX detected on Flight 8 was caused by a completely different issue.

According to the SpaceX statement, the problem detected in Starship’s aft section tonight “resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines. 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.”

During the livestream, SpaceX shared live flight data that indicated Starship lost function of all but two of its six engines.

Video captured from various locations shows debris from an uncrewed SpaceX rocket that exploded in the sky. The Federal Aviation Administration halted flights into Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Orlando airports for “falling space debris.” That halt has since been lifted.

Spectators capture video of debris from SpaceX explosion

00:55 - Source: CNN

Spectators capture video of debris from SpaceX explosion

00:55

This message was just posted to a Turks and Caicos government account on Instagram:

“We wish to advise the public that this evening’s SpaceX launch appears to have broken up in flight. We are in contact with the US FAA, SpaceX and UK agency leads to confirm the position. Post incident protocols have been engaged. The National Security Secretariat will continue to keep the public apprised as we work to ensure the safety and security of our Islands.”

It’s not yet clear whether debris hit the archipelago of Turks and Caicos after today’s flight. But in January, the ill-fated Starship flight rained debris on the islands. Volunteers collected piles of debris that had washed up on the islands’ beaches and plummeted to roadways and yards.

There was one report of property damage after Flight 7 — a car was struck by detritus. There were no reported injuries, the US Federal Aviation Administration said at the time.

Judy Burgett captured footage from Marathon, Florida, showing Starship’s fireball gradually breaking apart as it flew eastward.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared a post on his social media platform, X, just before Starship took flight. And he added a couple of re-tweets to his feed after that.

But the multibillionaire has not posted about the explosion. Musk also notably did not directly address or apologize for the fact that Starship debris struck the island of Turks and Caicos in January.

In the immediate aftermath of that flight, Musk appeared to signal that he did not anticipate significant delays, despite the Starship loss. He said in one social media post that, based on a “preliminary” look at the January flight problem, “Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month.”

CNN is watching SpaceX and Musk accounts for any updates.

The Federal Aviation Administration also announced that it is requiring SpaceX “to perform a mishap investigation into the loss of the Starship vehicle during launch operations on March 6.”

The agency is still overseeing an active investigation into the January Starship mishap that exploded near the Bahamas and rained debris on Turks and Caicos.

On Thursday, the FAA said that it “activated a Debris Response Area and briefly slowed aircraft outside the area where space vehicle debris was falling or stopped aircraft at their departure location. Normal operations have resumed.”

The Federal Aviation Administration has ended the ground stops that halted flights into some of Florida’s busiest airports for “falling space debris,” but flights leaving those airports are still delayed.

The FAA says departures are delayed from Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport and Miami International Airport an average of 30 and 45 minutes, respectively. The FAA is also delaying flights from Philadelphia International Airport an average of 30 minutes for “space launch debris.”

Just hours ago, a lunar lander developed by Houston-based company Intuitive Machines was given an uncertain prognosis as mission controllers were unsure why the company was not getting all the data back it expected.

It’s possible the lander touched down on the moon’s surface just fine, but Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said it is definitely not sitting in the correct orientation. It’s just not clear what exactly its orientation is.

Now, a SpaceX Starship craft has exploded yet again mere minutes into flight, erupting into a ball of flames near the Caribbean.

These missions were off-nominal — the aerospace term for not-as-expected — highlighting how spaceflight is very much still an exceedingly difficult endeavor. But it also underscores how relatively low-cost missions carried out by private-sector companies can be unpredictable.

In eerily similar fashion to Starship’s seventh test launch in January, the ship appears to have exploded less than 10 minutes into flight and created a massive debris cloud near populated islands in the Caribbean and Atlantic.

Judy Burgett captured footage from Marathon, Florida, showing Starship’s fireball gradually breaking apart as it flew eastward.

A person on Providenciales, the main island of the Turks and Caicos archipelago, also shared this footage with CNN, saying she captured it during Starship’s test flight.

Turks and Caicos was hammered with debris during Starship’s January mishap. It’s unclear where debris may have landed this time around.

SpaceX has confirmed that Starship was destroyed mid-flight, using the company’s euphemism for an unexpected destruction: “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

“Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses,” the company’s statement reads. “We will review the data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause. As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship’s reliability.”

SpaceX’s Dan Huot just gave this update: “We’ve got a lot of measures in place, like debris response areas, where we coordinate very closely with air traffic control. We have a lot of measures put (in place) before we ever launch a rocket to make sure that we’re keeping the public safe. Those worked last time and they’re actively in work right now.”

After Starship Flight 7 in January, a string of flight delays were triggered as the spacecraft exploded over the Caribbean. Debris also struck a car on the island of South Caicos. It’s not clear where exactly the vehicle exploded during today’s mission.

SpaceX’s Dan Huot just made it clear the company is no longer getting data from the Starship.

It’s not clear what state the vehicle is in or if its automated abort systems may have prompted it to self destruct for safety reasons.

“We’re no longer receiving telemetry at this moment. So we were only about 20 seconds away or so from the end of that ship (engine) burn,” Huot said. “We saw several of the engines start to cut out”

Loss of signal occurred at roughly the same point during this mission as with Flight 7, when Starship exploded over populated islands in Turks and Caicos, littering the islands with debris and striking a car.

SpaceX’s Dan Huot just said the company is “losing attitude control of the ship.”

Video shows the spacecraft is tumbling. And data on the livestream show only two of Starship’s six engines are functioning.

SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster, which houses the engines and propellant tanks that haul the Starship vehicle off the launchpad just made it into the arms of Mechazilla, SpaceX’s launch tower.

The 52-meter (171-foot) vehicle is designed to be captured mid air. Today’s successful landing marks the third time SpaceX has accomplished such a feat.

The Super Heavy booster just intentionally broke away from the Starship spacecraft.

SpaceX calls the method by which this is accomplished “hot staging” because Starship fires its engines to push itself away from Super Heavy — rather than using pneumatic pushers like SpaceX’s Falcon rockets.

It’s essentially separation by blunt force trauma.

The company just announced they will try to land the booster today.

The go-ahead to land the booster was given even though two engines appear to be out, according to the livestream.

The gargantuan Starship and Super Heavy just hit Max Q — a pivotol moment during any rocket launch.

Max Q is the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure.It occurs at the time when the rocket is moving quite fast while the atmosphere is still fairly thick — amounting to intense pressure.

Essentially, it’s a moment in time when the atmosphere is trying its best to squish the rocket.

The Super Heavy rocket booster just powered on its engines, kicking off today’s hourlong test flight.

The booster is expected to fire for 2.5 minutes before detaching from the Starship spacecraft, which will then fire its own engines and continue the mission on its own.