CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX suspects a fire may have caused its Starship to break apart during liftoff and send trails of flaming debris near the Caribbean.
SpaceX's Elon Musk said preliminary indications are that leaking fuel built up pressure in the cavity above the engine firewall. The resulting fire would have doomed the spacecraft.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered SpaceX to investigate what went wrong. The FAA said there were no reports of injuries from Starship debris.
The 400-foot Starship — the world's biggest and most powerful rocket — launched from the southern tip of Texas on a test flight early Thursday evening. The booster made it back to the pad for a catch by giant mechanical arms, only the second time in Starship history. But the engines on the still ascending spacecraft shut down one by one, and communication was lost 8 1/2 minutes into the flight.
Dramatic video taken near the Turks and Caicos Islands showed spacecraft debris raining down from the sky in a stream of fireballs. Flights near the falling debris had to be diverted, the FAA said.
SpaceX said Starship remained in its designated launch corridor over the Gulf of Mexico and then the Atlantic. Any surviving wreckage would have fallen along that path over water, the company said on its website.
Starship had been shooting for a controlled entry over the Indian Ocean, halfway around the world. Ten dummy satellites, mimicking SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites, were on board so the company could practice releasing them.
It was the seventh test flight of a Starship, but it featured a new and upgraded spacecraft. The FAA said it must approve SpaceX's accident findings and any corrective actions.
