• SpaceX’s eighth Starship launch ended in a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.
• The company reportedly lost communication with the rocket before it began tumbling and eventually, blew up.
• The Super Heavy Rocket returned to Earth safely and was caught by Mechzilla.

SpaceX is going to have to stop blowing up its rockets if owner Elon Musk wants to establish a Martian colony.

During the eighth flight of its Starship spacecraft, SpaceX experienced yet another “rapid unscheduled disassembly” which is to say, the thing blew up raining debris down on Caribbean nations. Importantly, it was just the Starship that blew up, the fuel-ladden Super Heavy rocket returned to Earth safely and was caught by the firm’s massive Mechzilla robotic arms.

As reported by Space.com, Starship was carrying dummy versions of SpaceX’s own Starlink satellites. These were meant to be deployed roughly 17 minutes into the flight but of course, that didn’t happen. Roughly nine minutes into the flight, SpaceX lost contact with the ship and shortly thereafter, it blew up.

Watch as air traffic clears the debris zones pic.twitter.com/1lQayfAbFz

— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) March 7, 2025

“Obviously a lot to go through, a lot to dig through, and we’re going to go right at it,” Dan Huot from SpaceX said during a livestream of the launch.

It’s not clear whether SpaceX detonated the ship after losing contact but, this eighth flight was meant to test the limits of the spacecraft with a view to eventually returning the ship to the launch site.

However, while in the air the spacecraft began to tumble. It’s also worth noting that just before launch, 40 seconds before liftoff, SpaceX hit pause on the countdown. This was resumed rather quickly but maybe this eighth flight was doomed from the off.

The seventh flight ended the same way (albeit with more spectacular visuals) but the cause of that “rapid unscheduled disassembly” was traced to a harmonic response that increased the stresses exerted on the hardware. This in turn caused a propellant leak that triggered fires throughout the vessel.

Of course we don’t know what went wrong this time but SpaceX really needs to start getting these Starship launches right, without blowing up the part that a crew would travel in.

NASA hopes to launch a crewed mission to the Moon soon but if one of the vessels it intends to use to transport gear such as the Human Landing system keeps blowing up, that’s going to throw a spanner into the works.

With that having been said, we’re sure that having ships blow up is a sure fire way to find out why they keep blowing up and trying the utmost to prevent that from happening. It’s still early in the year though and hopefully there is more success on the way for the folks at SpaceX.