SpaceX Starship launch: watch the second attempt of the 8th test flight liftoff

Clean up in aisle 8: SpaceX responds to Starship 8 explosion

SpaceX put out a statement on its X account regarding the "rapid unscheduled disassembly Thursday afternoon. 

"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," the post reads.

"We will review the data from today's flight test to better understand root cause. As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship's reliability," SpaceX added.

RIP Starship 8: What it looked like just before the "rapid unscheduled disassembly"

Here is a look at the view from the upper stage of Starship test flight 8 before it experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly"

Starship 8 burning debris seen from Cape Canaveral, Florida

Here is another view of SpaceX's Starship 8's firy descent back to earth as seen from Cape Canaveral, Florida after a failed test flight.

Starship 8 blows up over Bahamas

The eighth test flight of Starship was a mixed bag on Thursday afternoon. SpaceX mission control was able to return the Super Heavy Booster back to Starbase in Texas after a successful separation of the upper stage.

However, not long after the "Mechazilla", what Elon Musk is calling the chopsticks now, caught the Super Heavy, engines on the upper stage began to fail and mission control lost coms with it as it spun off course.

Video captured the upper stage of Starship disintigrate over the Bahamas.

"Mechazilla" grabs heavy booster as it returns to Starbase, Texas

SpaceX nailed another catch of the Heavy Booster rocket with "Mechazilla" as Elon Musk calls them, otherwise known as the chopsticks at the launch tower at SpaceX Starbase, Texas.

Scale of the Starship

The current iteration of Starship is 403.5 feet (123 meters) tall. It is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. However, Space X founder and CEO Elon Musk says that later versions will be even bigger.

Flight trajectory for Starship launch 8

The Starship will take off from Starbase in southern Texas and head southeast crossing over the Atlantic and Africa before making its way toward Australia where it will splash down in the Indian Ocean west of the island continent.

SpaceX Starship test flight 7 "experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly"

When you are the world’s richest person worth hundreds of billions you can joke off losing a hundred million as a rounding error. That’s how much each launch of his company SpaceX’s Starship is estimated to cost.

He took to social media to post a video of test flight 7's “rapid unscheduled disassembly" quipping “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”

Musk estimates that it will cost as little as $10 million per launch within a few years.

Space X

Trouble for Elon Musk, his SpaceX rocket disintegrates on a test flight and this is the incredible cost for the company

The seventh flight of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle did not go as many had hoped. Elon Musk's space company announced on its X account that "Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn," adding, "teams will continue to review data from today's flight test to better understand root cause."

Begun in 2012, Musk has estimated that the Starship program will cost between $5 billion and $10 billion to develop. In 2023 SpaceX planned to pump some $2 billion into rocket system in an effort to finally get Starship into orbit for the first time.

Hello and welcome to SpaceX’s eighth Starship flight test live

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is going forward with another test flight of Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, 3 days after the original attempt. During the previous test flight, the heavy booster successfully returned to the chopsticks. However, the upper stage, which featured extensive upgrades, exploded as it traversed the Caribbean heading out over the Atlantic nixing a test deployment of 10 mock satellites.

They will attempt both tasks again during today’s launch, however, test flight 8 will only attempt to deploy four Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites. This will be the first exercise of a satellite deploy mission.

Test flight eight will also test new technologies including multiple heat shield metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, in order to test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry. The end goal of the experiments is to enable Starship’s upper stage to eventually return to the launch site one day.

Join us as for live coverage of the event taking place at the company’s Starbase facilities in Boca Chica, Texas where it also builds the Starship rockets. The launch window opens at 5:30 p.m. CT / 6:30 p.m. ET / 3:30 p.m. PT, today 6 March, 2025.