March 7, 2025 - A SpaceX Starship, belonging to Elon Musk’s company, exploded in space yesterday, March 6, within minutes of its launch from Texas. This was the second failure of the company’s rocket programme, the eighth Starship to explode in a little over a month. SpaceX’s seventh Starship had also failed on launch during a test flight on January 16, 2025, marking a setback for SpaceX’s programme to launch satellites into space and send humans to the moon and Mars.

Videos showed fireball-like debris falling from the sky near south Florida and the Bahamas. This led to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to briefly slow aircraft around the debris-falling areas and also ground flights from several airports in the US for more than an hour.

The FAA also regulates private rocket launches and therefore, has directed the company to ascertain the failure cause. Going forward, SpaceX will need FAA nod before Starship can fly again.

"Unfortunately this happened last time too, so we've got some practice now," SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said.