‘UFO!' SpaceX Starship explodes, Miami airlines grounded. See video that put us on alert
'Did you see the comet?' the swim coach quizzed, twisting toward the University of Miami's Lake Osceola and nudging a glance to the night sky above the student activities center.
'It was a UFO!' a young swimmer chimed in on the pool deck during a chilly Thursday night practice. 'Aliens!' the coach joked as she showed what looked like a meteor shower streak on her phone screen.
They were among people across South Florida who saw streaks of something bright cascading across the sky when it was still light out early Thursday evening around 6:30.
The Federal Aviation Administration did, too. The FAA halted flights, including at Miami International Airport and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, after SpaceX confirmed that its Starship launch experienced a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' during its ascent.
Translation: The rocket blew up.
And it showered flaming debris over South Florida and the Caribbean that people caught on their cellphones while driving home or out and about. There were no reported injuries and no humans were in the rocket.
Sorry, not a UFO or aliens.
But the explosion up above had impact down below.
Aviation halt
At MIA, an airlines ground stop was issued at 6:42 p.m. that lasted until about 8 p.m., Miami Herald news partner CBS News Miami reported. The advisory cited a 'space launch incident.' Average departure delays soared to 36 minutes and a maximum delay twice that time of 74 minutes.
'Some flights at MIA are being delayed due to falling debris from the SpaceX launch over the Atlantic Ocean,' said Greg Chin, Communications Director at MIA.
Same thing at FLL four minutes later. Departure delays averaged 41 minutes and peaked at 67 minutes.
Arlene Satchell, FLL's spokeswoman, said that the ground stop that had everyone pondering the night skies was 'short lived and has been lifted.'
Friday morning it was business as usual. Travel had resumed. SpaceX was investigating. And people were twittering on TikTok, Instagram and other social media accounts about the night before when something in the evening sky freaked the system out.
What SpaceX said
SpaceX, Elon Musk's aerospace company, issued a statement on his platform X at 7:16 p.m. Thursday.
'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. 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.'
The 400-foot rocket broke up during its eighth flight test, USA Today reported. The flight contained no crew.
The spacecraft had lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas, at 6:30 p.m., Eastern time.
What earth dwellers said
'Space X reached for the stars… and Florida got the leftovers,' quipped Only in Dade on Instagram.
'Space debris over Miami! Holy [expletive.] That's my first time ever seeing that,' said TikTok user SunAndSand87, identified as 'Your average Joe navigating Miami a Day at a Time.'
His image shows the Miami skyline and PortMiami in the forefront and a shower of debris heading toward a dip into the ocean on the horizon.
Miami Herald staff writer Milena Malaver contributed to this report.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
US researchers identify 230 new viruses with surprising effect on ocean health
Tiny ocean organisms like algae, amoebas, and flagellates are key to the marine food chain, and giant viruses that infect them can affect how they grow and survive. In some cases, these viruses may also lead to public health issues, such as harmful algal blooms. In the quest to unravel the varying kind of viruses found inside our planet's large water-bodies, scientists at University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science have uncovered 230 new giant viruses using advanced computing tools and ocean data. Researchers also identified 530 new proteins within these viruses, including nine linked to photosynthesis—suggesting the viruses may interfere with how their hosts convert sunlight into energy. According to Mohammad Moniruzzaman, co-author of the study and assistant professor in the university's Department of Marine Biology and Ecology, gaining a better understanding of the diversity and role of giant viruses in the ocean—and how they interact with algae and other microbes—could help predict and potentially manage harmful algal blooms, which pose risks to human health in Florida and around the world. "Giant viruses are often the main cause of death for many phytoplankton, which serve as the base of the food web supporting ocean ecosystems and food sources. The novel functions found in giant viruses could have biotechnological potential, as some of these functions might represent novel enzymes,"explained Moniruzzaman in a press release on University of Miami's website. Detecting giant viruses has proved to be a challenge so far because current computer methods had limitations. To overcome this, the research team created a new tool called BEREN—a program which offers a simple, all-in-one tool for identifying and classifying giant viruses in sequencing datasets To conduct their study, researchers gathered DNA sequencing data from nine major ocean sampling projects spanning the globe. Using BEREN they extracted giant virus genomes from this data. The scientists then analyzed the genomes using public gene function databases to identify the roles and activities encoded by these viruses. Following this, the results were compared to known giant virus genomes to uncover previously unknown functions and gain deeper insight into their diversity. Benjamin Minch, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at the Rosenstiel School, observed that giant viruses carry genes linked to important cellular functions like carbon metabolism and photosynthesis—processes usually found only in living cells. This finding suggests that these viruses have a significant role in altering their host's metabolism during infection and may impact key marine chemical cycles. The researchers used the University of Miami's Pegasus supercomputer at the Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC) to process and assemble large metagenomes, often over a gigabase per sample, allowing them to reconstruct hundreds of microbial community libraries. Minch also noted that the study helped create a framework to improve tools for detecting new viruses, which could enhance efforts to monitor pollution and pathogens in waterways. Findings of the study have been published in the journal npj Viruses.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Doubleheader SpaceX rocket launches in Florida: What time is liftoff for Axiom and Starlink?
A doubleheader rocket launch from Florida is on the horizon — and, pending weather and cloud cover, the pair of SpaceX launches will be minutes from each other and very Instagram-worthy. Axiom's next crew of astronauts is set to travel to the International Space Station, and a SpaceX rocket will potentially launch a batch of Starlink satellites — on the same morning, Tuesday, June 10. Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson will command the Axiom mission, with liftoff from Kennedy Space Center, and the Starlink mission takes off from nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Below is more information about the SpaceX rocket launches in Florida and suggestions on where to watch them from here. Rocket launch tally: Here's a list of all 2025 missions from Cape Canaveral, Florida (psst, there's a lot) For questions or comments, email FLORIDA TODAY Space Reporter Rick Neale at rneale@ or Space Reporter Brooke Edwards at bedwards@ For more space news from the USA TODAY Network, visit Mission: Axiom Space is set to send four spacefarers up to the International Space Station on a private two-week research mission. The Axiom Mission 4, also known as Ax-4, is the latest in a series of human spaceflights in partnership with both NASA and SpaceX. Ax-4 will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. Axiom crew: Commander Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space who previously commanded Ax-2; pilot Shubhanshu Shukla, an astronaut with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO); and mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, a scientist and engineer from Poland who is part of the European Space Agency's reserve astronaut class, and Tibor Kapu, a mechanical engineer from Hungary. Launch window: 8:22 a.m. EDT Tuesday, June 10, 2025 Launch location: Launch pad 39A from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida Sonic booms: Yes, from neighboring Space Coast of Florida (Titusville and Mims to Melbourne and Palm Bay) Live coverage starts two hours before liftoff at : You can watch live rocket launch coverage from USA TODAY Network's Space Team, which consists of FLORIDA TODAY space reporters Rick Neale and Brooke Edwards and visuals journalists Craig Bailey, Malcolm Denemark and Tim Shortt. Our Space Team will provide up-to-the-minute updates in a mobile-friendly live blog, complete with a countdown clock, at starting 90 minutes before liftoff. You can download the free FLORIDA TODAY app, which is available in the App Store or Google Play, or type into your browser. Tom Cruise and untitled SpaceX project: 'Mission: Impossible' star who lives in Florida may shoot a film in outer space Mission: SpaceX will launch a batch of broadband satellites for the ever-expanding Starlink constellation in low-Earth orbit, a Federal Aviation Administration operations plan advisory shows. Launch window: 9:03 a.m. to 1:34 p.m. EDT Tuesday, June 10, 2025 Launch location: Launch complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida Sonic booms: No Trajectory: Southeast Live coverage starts 90 minutes before liftoff at . Shown is the National Weather Service-Melbourne radar, which shows conditions in real-time for the Space Coast, Brevard County, Orlando and other parts of Florida. The current date and time show up on the bottom right of this radar embed; otherwise, you may need to clear your cache. Sebastian Inlet State Park, 9700 S. State Road A1A, Melbourne Beach, Florida (cost to enter) Wabasso Beach Park, 1808 Wabasso Beach Road, Wabasso, Florida Ambersands Beach Park, 12566 N. SR A1A, Vero Beach, Florida (free parking) South Beach Park, 1700 Ocean Drive, Vero Beach, Florida (free parking) Merrill Barber Bridge in Vero Beach, Florida Alma Lee Loy Bridge in Vero Beach, Florida Fort Pierce Inlet State Park, 905 Shorewinds Drive, Fort Pierce, Florida Blind Creek Beachside North and South, 5460 S. Ocean Drive, Fort Pierce, Florida Blue Heron Beach, 2101 Blue Heron Blvd., Fort Pierce, Florida Frederick Douglass Memorial Park, 3600 S. Ocean Drive, Fort Pierce, Florida Dollman Park Beachside, 9200 S. Ocean Drive, Jensen Beach, Florida Herman's Bay Beach, 7880 S. Ocean Drive, Jensen Beach, Florida John Brooks Park Beachside, 3300 S. Ocean Drive, Fort Pierce, Florida Middle Cove Beach, 4600 S. Ocean Drive, Fort Pierce, Florida Normandy Beach in Jensen Beach, Florida Pepper Park Beachside, 3302 N. SR A1A, Fort Pierce, Florida Walton Rocks Beach, 6700 S. Ocean Drive, Jensen Beach, Florida (dog park) Waveland Beach, 10350 S. Ocean Drive, Jensen Beach, Florida State Road A1A causeway in Stuart, Florida House of Refuge and beach, 301 S.E. MacArthur Blvd., Stuart, Florida Contributing: Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY Network This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: What time are next Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral rocket launches
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
The Latin American Country That Told Elon Musk ‘No'
Web pages load at a crawling pace. Video streams glitch and freeze. Outside Bolivia's biggest cities, the nearest internet signal is sometimes hours away over treacherous mountain roads. So when Elon Musk's Starlink offered Bolivia fast, affordable internet beamed from space, many expected the Andean nation of 12 million to celebrate. Instead, Bolivia said no thanks. Starlink, the satellite internet service from Mr. Musk's private space company, SpaceX, has made remarkable strides in South America, spreading to almost every country and bringing high-speed internet to the region's most far-flung corners, even reaching isolated Indigenous people living deep in the Amazon rainforest. But Starlink's advance has been stymied by Bolivia, which refused to give it an operating license last year, with experts and officials citing worries over its unchecked dominance everywhere it has set up shop, instead choosing to rely on the country's own aging Chinese-made satellite. The decision to reject Starlink has puzzled and angered people in Bolivia, where internet speeds are the slowest in South America and hundreds of thousands remain offline. Without an internet connection, people often struggle to get an education and lack access to jobs and fast help during natural disasters. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
