SpaceX conducted its eighth test flight of their Starship rocket this afternoon. Designated IFT-8, the vehicle launched from the company’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas. Within minutes, the mission was over.
The Starship system, comprising the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft, lifted off right on time from SpaceX’s Starbase at 5:30 PM CST. After stage separation, the booster executed a return trajectory to the launch site, where it was successfully “caught” by SpaceX’s mechanical arms, known as “chopsticks.” This marked the third successful recovery of a Super Heavy booster, an important part of SpaceX’s reuseable rocket technology.
As all eyes turned back to the second stage, anomalies began to surface about eight minutes into the flight. eight minutes into the flight at an altitude of around 90 miles. As several of Starship’s Raptor engines began to shut down, the spacecraft became unstable and started to spin uncontrollably. SpaceX engineers lost contact with the Starship, and the vehicle disintegrated shortly thereafter.
Observers across regions, including south Florida and the Bahamas, reported sightings of debris streaking across the evening sky, indicative of the spacecraft’s breakup upon re-entry. Social media platforms were abuzz with videos capturing the luminous fragments descending, eerily reminiscent of IFT-7’s demise in January.
Following the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) implemented precautionary measures to ensure public safety in response to the in-flight anomaly. Ground stops were issued at several major Florida airports, including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and Orlando, due to concerns over potential “space launch debris.” The ground stops were all lifted by 8 PM EST.
This incident marks the second consecutive failure of the Starship system within the year. The previous mishap occurred in January 2025, during the seventh test flight, when the spacecraft exploded mid-flight due to a harmonic response causing hardware damage. Debris from that failure was observed over the Caribbean Sea, leading to an FAA-mandated investigation. Despite the investigation not being fully complete, the FAA had determined that SpaceX met all safety, environmental, and licensing requirements to proceed with the eighth test flight.
Today’s test flight comes just days after SpaceX touted an aggressive timeline to ramp up launches of Starship in Florida by the end of the year. Given the current status of Starship development, that goal would have been nearly impossible to achieve, and with today’s outcome, it’s a safe bet that it just won’t happen.
SpaceX has long embraced a developmental philosophy that acknowledges the iterative nature of rocket engineering, and no doubt, will take today’s failure in stride. Each test flight, regardless of outcome, is viewed as an opportunity to gather data and refine systems. The company will continue to analyze today’s flight data flight data to identify root causes and implement necessary corrections.
The development of the Starship system is central to SpaceX’s vision of enabling cost-effective space travel. As an integral part of NASA’s Artemis program, the company looks to transport large satellite payloads and, eventually, humans to the Moon and Mars.
