The SpaceX Starship rocket exploded and disintegrated in space a few minutes after its launch yesterday, Thursday, from Texas, forcing passenger aircraft flights over the Gulf of Mexico to change course to avoid debris falling to Earth, marking a setback for Elon Musk’s flagship rocket program.

SpaceX mission control lost contact with the upgraded Starship, which was carrying a payload of mock satellites but no crew, eight minutes after its launch from South Texas facilities at 5:38 p.m. local time (12:38 a.m. Friday, Greek time).

Videos showed bright orange spheres streaking across the sky above Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, leaving trails of smoke. “We’ve lost all communication with the vehicle – this tells us we had an anomaly with the upper stage,” SpaceX Communications Director Dan Huot said, later confirming that the rocket was lost.

Dozens of commercial flights were forced to land at airports other than their destinations or altered their course to avoid the debris, according to the FlightRadar24 website. Departures from airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, also experienced 45-minute delays, it added.

SpaceX CEO Musk posted a video on X showing the debris crossing the sky and wrote: “Success is not certain, but fun is guaranteed!”

The rocket’s upper stage, the Starship, which was 2 meters taller than previous versions of the rocket, was described by SpaceX as a “next-generation vehicle with significant upgrades” before the test. It was supposed to perform a controlled descent into the Indian Ocean about an hour after its launch from Texas.

Musk stated that, based on preliminary assessments, an internal liquid oxygen leak increased pressure, causing the rocket to break apart.

This test was the seventh for Starship since 2023. It is part of Musk’s multibillion-dollar effort to build a rocket capable of transporting humans and cargo to Mars and deploying large constellations of satellites in Earth’s orbit.

However, the rocket’s large booster, the Super Heavy, returned to the launch pad approximately seven minutes after liftoff, as planned, slowing its descent from space using its Raptor engines and performing a complex maneuver to latch onto giant metal arms attached to a launch tower.