SpaceX says its Starship, the world’s largest rocket, exploded Thursday, Jan. 16, shortly after taking off from Texas for its seventh launch. The company called the rocket’s break-up a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
The company’s owner, Elon Musk, said their early indications suggest the unmanned rocket had a fuel leak. It caused Starship to fail and break up above the Caribbean Sea.
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Musk acknowledged videos of the rocket’s explosion, reposting one on his social media site X.
Starship was a pioneering rocket, with SpaceX succeeding in catching its booster after launch twice—first in October and again following Thursday’s launch.
NASA plans to use Starship as part of its Artemis mission, which will land humans on the Moon for the first time in over half a century. The agency paid SpaceX nearly $4 billion over two different contracts to use its technology during a future Moon landing.
The Federal Aviation Administration briefly rerouted and delayed flights in South Florida, not far from where the rocket disintegrated, to avoid potential collisions with Starship’s debris.
