Elon Musk’s most powerful spacecraft ever built exploded over the Turks and Caicos Islands.
It was a typical quiet afternoon on the tropical islands located southeast of Florida. However, on January 16, shortly after sunset, a spacecraft exploded over the North Atlantic Ocean near the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The upper stage of a SpaceX Starship launch system, the most powerful rocket ever built, disintegrated minutes after liftoff from Texas during its seventh test flight, turning into a cloud of debris falling from the sky.
Were they meteors? Satellites? The latest apocalyptic warnings?
“I’ve never seen colors like that in the sky. At first, I thought it was a real plane that had exploded,” said Lori Kaine, a resident of Providenciales, the main island of the Turks and Caicos archipelago.
When Kaine checked messages on her phone, she saw reports about the failed flight of a Starship spacecraft.
The next morning, Kaine said she began to analyze the aftermath.
A mysterious cable had fallen onto the road. “Hexagonal broken tiles, likely pieces of the spacecraft’s thermal shield, littered the road where Kaine usually walks her dogs,” she said. The beach was covered in debris.
No injuries have been reported from the explosion, but many residents said rocket parts fell near homes, and some others were retrieved from the sea along the beach.
After the Starship explosion, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) activated a “Debris Response Zone,” briefly closing airspace near the Turks and Caicos Islands. The U.S. agency licenses commercial rocket launches and is investigating the incident.
Debris has now been found across the islands, according to a database created by the local environmental group, Turks and Caicos, in partnership with the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources of the government.
“Debris has been found on every beach in Providenciales, as well as from South Caicos to West Caicos,” said Alizee Zimmermann, Executive Director of the Turks and Caicos Reef Fund. There was also at least one reported case of property damage after debris struck a car.
Unlike NASA and some of the company’s competitors in the aerospace industry, SpaceX has adopted a strategy called “rapid iterative development.” This strategy aims to build multiple prototypes for early-stage testing.
In its statement to CNN, the FAA said that the government of the Turks and Caicos Islands was informed before the Starship launch that the islands were within a potential risk zone.
