The ninth launch of Elon Musk’s futuristic SpaceX Starship comes after two previous space rockets blew up.
Billionaire Elon Musk’s commercial space flight company, SpaceX, lost control of its ninth Starship test flight 30 minutes after the uncrewed rocket vehicle was launched into space from Texas, the United States, the Reuters news agency reports.
The mega-rocket then re-entered the atmosphere earlier than planned on Wednesday after an onboard fuel leak triggered uncontrollable spinning in space, according to Reuters.
In a post on social media, SpaceX said the Starship experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, meaning it burst apart.
“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary,” the company added.
Before losing control, the 403-foot (123-metre) rocket flew beyond the point of past test-launch failures, according to reports.
The latest test launch comes after a SpaceX Starship exploded shortly after takeoff on March 6.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) diverted several flights and briefly halted departures at four Florida airports, including Miami International Airport, as debris from the failed flight fell in the area.
Musk has spent billions of dollars on Starship’s development. The South African-born billionaire claims the initiative is part of his commercial space flight company’s plan to colonise the planet Mars. SpaceX is also working with US government agency NASA to return humans to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
Due to their large size and frequent failures, SpaceX test flights have now rained down debris across southern US states and the Caribbean on multiple occasions.
As is standard for every test, the area in the Gulf containing the booster’s flight path was cleared prior to launch
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 28, 2025
‘Fail fast, learn fast’
Before this latest launch, Starship had completed eight integrated test flights on top of its Super Heavy booster launch vehicle, with four successes and four failures ending in explosions.
The company is betting that its “fail fast, learn fast” approach will eventually pay off. Still, it acknowledged in a statement that progress “won’t always come in leaps”.
In issuing approval for Tuesday’s test, the FAA said it had nearly doubled the airspace closure zone to 1,600 nautical miles (2,963 km) east of the launch site.
The Starship test involved coordination with authorities in the United Kingdom, the British-controlled Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas, Mexico and Cuba, according to the AFP news agency.
The FAA also recently approved an increase in annual launches from five to 25 – stating that the increased frequency would not adversely affect the environment, and overruling objections from conservation groups.
The FAA’s changes come as Musk has played a prominent role in US President Donald Trump’s second administration, claiming to focus his attention on what he describes as “billions, hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud and abuse“.
However, Musk’s large business portfolio’s overlap with the US federal government’s regulatory role has raised questions and criticism. In March, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed an ethics complaint with the US Department of Transportation’s Office of the Inspector General, requesting an investigation into whether the FAA’s business transactions with Musk’s Starlink satellite communications network violated conflict-of-interest laws.
