Starship debris falls on Caribbean as vehicle disintegrates in flight

Debris from SpaceX’s Starship launch have been reportedly falling on the Caribbean as the ship exploded in flight shortly after launch.

According to a tweet by SpaceX on 17 January, the vehicle disassembled during ascent, and teams are working on reviewing data from the failed launch to improve in the future.

Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today's flight test to better understand root cause.

With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s…

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 16, 2025

A great lesson

Starship is a flagship rocket built by Elon Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX. The two-stage, fully reusable vehicle has been under development for some time now and launched yesterday 16 January with the first test flight for 2025.

However due to some technical issues being investigated, the flight was aborted as Starship started disintegrating shortly after takeoff.

The rocket returned to the launch site for ‘catch attempt’, according to another tweet by SpaceX. Meanwhile, there were reports of debris falling from the sky in the Caribbean Island of Turks and Caicos as a result of the Starship disintegration.

In Turks and Caicos atm and thought there was a meteor shower – turns out it was Starship raining debris over the island after @SpaceX pic.twitter.com/CH5TF7GYY7

— Cameron Bloomfield (@cambloomfield) January 17, 2025

Although the wreck has gotten the attention of the media far and wide, Musk has reportedly said the incident is “less than a bump in the road.”

The head of SpaceX said the flight was ¼ completed, meaning it could do better next time. He also stressed that all necessary checks were done, and the company is still on schedule to make Mars self-sufficient.

SpaceX launches

SpaceX has designed and launched several rockets recently. In 2024, it launched several rockets as a means of sending satellites to space.

On one of such launches, it used Falcon 9, a two-stage rocket to send 12 satellites with Direct to Cell capabilities into space.

This is one of the company’s projects, aimed at enabling Starlink internet access on cell phones. Starship launch is just one of the several that have happened in 2025, and the company assures that another launch will come soon.

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