Not to be outdone, commercial space Goliath SpaceX snatched another rocket out of midair in the late afternoon. SpaceX, controlled by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, tested its huge Starship launch vehicle on Thursday afternoon.

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

Elon Musk’s company managed 138 successful orbital launches in 2024 - more than 40 more than the year before. SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell has said that the firm is aiming for even more launches this year, with a good chunk of them being Starship flight tests.

Mars in 2024 was the site of the sad end of a machine that lived far beyond expectations. On January 18, NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter flew for the last time. Given that on landing its rotors broke off, that's a pretty definitive conclusion.

The SpaceX Starship - developed by Elon Musk's aerospace company SpaceX - blasted off from Texas on Thursday for its seventh test flight, but it encountered difficulties

The "rapid unscheduled disassembly" was likely caused by a propellant leak, Elon Musk said, and was captured on video by spectators on the ground.

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.

Starship's previous six test flights occurred in April and November of 2023 and March, June, October and November of last year. SpaceX aimed to conduct a chopsticks catch of Super Heavy on Flight 6 as well, but a communication issue with the launch tower nixed that try, and the booster diverted for a Gulf of Mexico splashdown.

The spacecraft was supposed to soar across the Gulf of Mexico on a near loop around the world similar to previous test flights. SpaceX had packed it with 10 dummy satellites for practice at

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Government officials in Turks and Caicos said Friday that debris from a SpaceX rocket test that went awry fell over the Caribbean islands but that there have been no reported injuries so far and only minimal damages to property.