Starship's seventh test flight ended in explosion when the vehicle's upper stage “suffered rapid, unscheduled disassembly while burning during ascent” over the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted a video events where debris flew across and lit up the sky. During the company's webcast, Dan Huot of SpaceX Communications said they “saw that the engines failed via telemetry” towards the end of the ascent and that they eventually lost contact with the Craft, which the company calls the craft's upper stage. This is stated in a message from SpaceX. tweet that it will continue to analyze test data to understand the root cause of the explosion.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued an order advisory to pilots after an incident, warning them of falling debris in certain locations. Before the test, SpaceX said it was a “next-generation launch with significant upgrades” and that it was to conduct the first Starship payload deployment test using 10 Starlink simulators.
Despite the fact that the starship's upper stage burned out, the test was still partially successful. The Raptor's engines caught fire during ascent before the ground crew lost contact with it about 8 minutes into the flight. SpaceX was also able to recover the Super Heavy booster by catching the rocket's first stage using mechanical arms on the starbase's launch tower.