SpaceX Starship Flight 8 Surfers the Same Explosive Fate as Flight 7 — With a Catch
Back on January 16, 2025, SpaceX's Starship Flight 7 exploded after launch. Now, Starship Flight 8, which was essentially a re-do of that mission, has also exploded.
Seven minutes after Starship Flight 8 was launched from the SpaceX Starbase site in South Texas, the rocket exploded. This news was confirmed by CNN.
Starship Flight 8 experienced "rapid unscheduled disassembly," according to an official statement from SpaceX. Similar to what happened during the January launch, the rocket broke up over the Caribbean, which caused a debris cloud in the area.
"Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses," SpaceX said in a statement."We have a lot of measures put [in place] before we ever launch a rocket to make sure that we're keeping the public safe," Dan Huot of SpaceX said. "Those worked last time and they're actively in work right now.'
However, the mission was not a complete failure. Although the primary rocket stage of the craft was lost, SpaceX did perform a successful "catch" of the Super Heavy booster. This was also the case during the Starship Flight 7.
Both Flight 7 in January and Flight 8 were uncrewed. Elon Musk has yet to make a statement about the explosion.
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