WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Starship rocket broke up in space minutes after launching from Texas on Thursday, forcing airline flights over the Gulf of Mexico to change course to avoid falling debris and setting back Elon Musk's flagship rocket program.

SpaceX mission control lost contact with the newly upgraded Starship, which was carrying its first test payload of mock satellites but no crew, eight minutes after liftoff from its South Texas rocket facilities.

Video shot by Reuters showed orange balls of light streaking across the sky over the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, leaving trails of smoke behind.

Elon Musk's company said Starship broke apart — what it called a "rapid unscheduled disassembly".

"We did lose all communications with the ship," SpaceX Communications Manager Dan Huot said.

The last time a Starship upper stage failed was in March last year, as it was reentering Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, but rarely has a SpaceX mishap caused widespread disruptions to air traffic.

Dozens of commercial flights were diverted to other airports or altered course to avoid potential debris, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24. Departures from airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, were also delayed by about 45 minutes, it added.

Planes diverted

The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates private launch activities, said it had briefly slowed and diverted planes around the area where space debris was falling, but normal operations had since resumed.

The FAA regularly closes airspace for space launches and reentries, but it can create a "debris response area" to prevent aircraft from entering if the space vehicle experiences an anomaly outside the originally closed zone.

SpaceX CEO Musk posted a video on X showing the debris field and said, "Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!"

The Starship upper stage, which is 2 meters taller than previous versions, was a "new generation ship with significant upgrades," SpaceX said in a mission description prior to the test. It was due to make a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean roughly an hour after its launch from Texas.

Musk said a preliminary assessment of the failure showed an internal leak of liquid oxygen fuel built up pressure and led to the rocket's breakup.

The FAA is likely to open a mishap investigation that would ground Starship — as the agency has done in the past — and examine whether any of the debris from the rocket's mid-flight blast fell on populated areas or outside of Starship's predetermined hazard zone.

The mishap threatens to derail Musk's goal of launching at least 12 Starship tests this year, depending on how quickly SpaceX can implement fixes and whether the FAA opens a mishap investigation.

"Nothing so far suggests pushing the next launch past next month," Musk said.

The mission on Thursday was SpaceX's seventh Starship test since 2023, part of Musk's multibillion-dollar effort to build a rocket capable of ferrying humans and cargo to Mars, as well as deploying large batches of satellites into Earth's orbit.

Agencies via Xinhua