SpaceX's Starship explodes in flight test

Washington: A SpaceX Starship rocket broke up in space minutes after launching from Texas on Thursday, forcing airline flights over the Gulf of Mexico to alter course to avoid falling debris and setting back Elon Musk's flagship rocket program. SpaceX mission control lost contact with the newly upgraded Starship, carrying its first test payload of mock satel-lites but no crew, eight minutes after liftoff from its South Texas rocket facilities at 5:38 pm.

Video shot by Reuters showed orange balls of light streaking across the sky over the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, leaving trails of smoke be-hind. "We did lose all communications with the ship – that is essentially telling us we had an anomaly with the upper stage," SpaceX Communi-cations Manager Dan Huot said, confirming minutes later that the ship was lost.

The last time a Starship upper stage failed was in March last year, as it was reentering Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean but rarely has a SpaceX mishap caused widespread disruptions to air traffic. At Miami International Airport, some flights were grounded, according to a Reuters witness.