SpaceX’s Flight 7 Starship Likely Caught On Footage As It Explodes & Creates Debris Trails

After a surprising loss of ship during Starship Flight 7 earlier today, multiple visuals on social media suggest that the upper stage ship disintegrated during flight somewhere over the Dominican Republic. SpaceX's Flight 7 ended without fanfare earlier today, as while the firm did catch the 232-feet-tall Super Heavy booster with the launch tower, it lost contact with the ship a minute and a half after the tower catch. Now, several users on X have shared visuals of a rocket breaking up in the sky in what is likely the upper-stage ship.

SpaceX Starship Upper Stage Lost On Flight 7 As Firm Confirms a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly

In an X post made moments back, SpaceX confirmed that the Starship upper stage had undergone what the firm calls a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' or RUD. A RUD is simply a rocket breaking up or exploding during flight, and while SpaceX might provide us with the details and causes of the failure later, several viewers in the Caribbean appear to have spotted the rocket after its RUD.

One video from X user @FlyerXT appears to have caught the rocket just as it exploded during the mission. After SpaceX caught the Super Heavy booster at around the seven minute mark post liftoff, the second stage continued its journey powered by the Raptor engines. However, the firm lost data from the ship at close to the eight and a half minute mark and its presenters confirmed later during the live-stream that this was the point at which they had lost the ship.

The footage from @FlyerXT appears to show Starship traveling in the sky and then exploding. The ship seems to be engulfed in flames during its flight before exploding in a ball of flames, which is characteristic of its methane propellant.

The second video from the same user shows the aftermath of the explosion. In it, multiple pieces of Starship's debris are seen flying through the atmosphere and heading to an unknown location as of now. Flight paths of all rockets, and particularly those under development such as Starship, are carefully mapped to ensure little to minimal damage to people or property on the ground.

Since Starship launched from US soil, SpaceX and the US government are eventually responsible for meeting any claims that might arise from an accident, and the firm's license requires it to fill out a hefty insurance policy as well. One such policy, just for the upper stage's 'hops' in 2020, had come with an eye-watering tag of $198 million.

@FlyerXT's footage is from the cruise ship Icon of the Seas in the Caribbean. Another X user in the British territory of the Turks and Caicos shared similar footage of fiery debris present in the sky. The potentially thousands of pieces of the rocket are traveling in a straight line in the footage, and similar footage from user @realcamtem shot at a different angle shows multiple debris streams moving at high speeds.

A clear sky view isn't the only thing disturbed by the anomaly. According to an open source intelligence page on X, the anomaly appears to also have impacted the paths of several flights in the area. A flight advisory for the region was one of the first indicators of a test flight, and the OSINT page speculates that as many as 20 flights might have been affected.