SpaceX succeeded in catching a Super Heavy booster this evening, but the Starship second stage was lost minutes later. It was the second Starship explosion in a row, again over the Caribbean.
The eighth Starship Integrated Flight Test (IFT-8) lifted off on time at 6:30 pm ET, three days after a first attempt was scrubbed.
Liftoff of Starship! pic.twitter.com/OL7moLdZ2u
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 6, 2025
Liftoff of the Super Heavy/Starship combination appeared flawless. The first stage, Super Heavy, or the “booster,” returned to the launch tower to be caught by mechanical arms — Mechazilla — or “chopsticks.”
Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster! pic.twitter.com/JFeJSdnQ5x
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 6, 2025
SpaceX made a number of changes to Starship after it exploded over the Turks and Caicos Islands in January on IFT-7, but apparently they weren’t enough.
Starship again disintegrated over the Caribbean, what SpaceX calls a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly or RUD.
During Starship’s ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost. 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…
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 7, 2025
Photos of the RUD were quickly posted on X, the social media platform owned by SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk.
Just saw Starship 8 blow up in the Bahamas @SpaceX @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/rTMJu23oVx
— Jonathon Norcross (@NorcrossUSA) March 6, 2025
Is that space X rocket disintegration #spacex pic.twitter.com/apEagPIqDB
— Talha Mirza (@tmirza777) March 6, 2025
Footage of SpaceX’s Starship breaking up on reentry over the Bahamas and West Indies. pic.twitter.com/2TaGkvLzrB
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) March 7, 2025
Starship is SpaceX’s future. Designed not only to launch satellites into Earth orbit, NASA has contracted with SpaceX to use it as a Human Landing System (HLS) for at least the first two Artemis missions to put astronauts back on the lunar surface and Musk wants to use it to send millions of people to Mars to create a multi-planetary species.
Last Updated: Mar 06, 2025 8:12 pm ET