SpaceX confirmed the upper stage had undergone "rapid unscheduled disassembly," the company's euphemism for an explosion.

Dramatic footage showing streaks of light zipping across the sky surfaced online following Elon Musk's Starship explosion over the Atlantic Ocean.

The rocket company said the space vehicle came apart during its ascent. Videos posted to social media showed debris streaking through the sky.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk made light of Starship's fiery end. "Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!" he said on X.

"Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity."

Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, pulled off a daring booster catch on its most ambitious test flight yet, but the spacecraft was lost. Follow for the latest news.

SpaceX launched Starship on Thursday for a seventh test flight, after weather concerns pushed back an experiment that will feature the spacecraft’s first payload deployment test, and while it successfully caught the Super Heavy Booster, Starship lost connection and “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

The uncrewed Starship spacecraft was apparently destroyed during its first flight launch of 2025 that blasted off from south Texas.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday it will oversee an investigation by Elon Musk's SpaceX into an explosive Starship test flight the previous day that forced airlines to divert dozens of flights to avoid debris.

Regulators are looking into reports of property damage in the island nation of Turks and Caicos caused by debris falling after a SpaceX Starship vehicle exploded over the ocean during a test mission Thursday,

The FAA grounded SpaceX's Starship pending an investigation into the failure that caused the rocket to break apart midflight after launching on Thursday.