SpaceX's Starship spacecraft exploded again this morning during its eighth test mission. Despite successfully launching from Starbase using a Super Heavy rocket, the spacecraft disintegrated about 8 minutes after launch while in the process of reaching orbital altitude to launch a cargo of several mock Starlink satellites.
This is the second failure of Starship this year, with the previous launch ending with the spacecraft's debris burning and passing through the airspace of the Turks and Caicos Islands. The Super Heavy successfully landed again and was caught by a claw mechanism at Starbase Texas.
The problems were first detected after several of the Starship's engines suddenly failed, causing the spacecraft to spin out of control before breaking apart. The debris returned to Earth and burned up like meteorites in the airspace near Florida.
Since the launch test was conducted two years ago, only half have been categorized as meeting the targets set by SpaceX. To date, Starship has not been able to return to Earth safely or launch cargo.
Failure after failure has caused the Dear Moon mission to orbit the moon, which was supposed to be carried out in 2023, to be cancelled by Japanese tycoon Yusaku Maezawa. As a result, the Artemis Mission, which will return humans to the lunar surface, has also been postponed from 2026 to 2027.