During Starship’s ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost.

The Starship was “auto destroyed” by the Flight Termination System (FDS) once again.

Following the explosion, the FAA issued a NOTAM about an incident during launch.

Flights circling over Dominican Republic after the loss of SpaceX’s Starship.

UPDATE 00:40 UTC
ATC restrictions have been lifted.

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On the night of February 18-19, 2025, the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket disintegrated over Europe, causing a shower of shooting stars. In Poland, debris were found across the country.

It all started with a technical failure during a mission that began two weeks earlier. While the first stage of the launcher returned safely, as usual, the second stage had to perform a maneuver to be deorbited.

But this operation, which is systematically carried out to direct this element towards totally uninhabited areas (in this case, the Indian Ocean), could not be carried out. According to SpaceX , this was due to “a small leak of liquid oxygen, which led to higher combustion rates of the vehicle than expected “.

Faced with this malfunction, the decision was made not to proceed with the relighting of the upper stage (which weighs almost four tons) in order to take no risks.” The deorbit combustion was not performed and the vehicle was passivated in orbit to eliminate the stored energy sources ,” confirms SpaceX.

SpaceX and Poland cooperate on debris recovery

But, by making this choice, the atmospheric re-entry of the upper stage went from a controlled deorbit status to an uncontrolled fall to Earth. A return monitored by SpaceX and the European Space Agency.

According to SpaceX, after the Falcon 9’s second stage was passivated and it re-entered the atmosphere over Europe, its teams are “working closely with the Polish government on recovery and cleanup operations .”

Photos have been circulating on the Internet, such as this high-pressure carbon tank.

In a February 20 update , the Polish space agency confirmed that it is cooperating with SpaceX to recover and return the remains of the Falcon 9 found in the country. Police have also been called in to secure the affected areas.

These debris, SpaceX specifies, “do not contain any toxic material .” However, it is recommended not to handle or collect them, even if you find some at home. Moreover, space debris falling in your garden or house does not automatically result in a transfer of ownership.

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The company is planning to launch Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, for the eighth time on Friday (Feb. 28).

Musk shared to X on Sunday that SpaceX would attempt its eighth Starship test flight this coming Friday.

Subject to approval by regulatory authorities, the company mentioned on its website a possible launch from Boca Chica, Texas at 23:30 GMT.

The launch window will open at 5:30 p.m. CT. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change.

During the flight test, Starship will deploy four Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites, as the first exercise of a satellite deploy mission. The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to demise upon entry. A relight of a single Raptor engine while in space is also planned.

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With a suite of NASA science and technology on board, Firefly Aerospace is targeting no earlier than 3:45 a.m. EST on Sunday, March 2, to land the Blue Ghost lunar lander on the Moon.

Blue Ghost is slated to touch down near Mare Crisium, a plain in the northeast quadrant on the near side of the Moon, as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign to establish a long-term lunar presence.

Live coverage of the landing, jointly hosted by NASA and Firefly, will air on NASA+ starting at 2:30 a.m. EST, approximately 75 minutes before touchdown on the Moon’s surface.

The broadcast will also stream on Firefly’s YouTube channel. Coverage will include live streaming and blog updates as the descent milestones occur.

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Looking ahead, Voyager 1’s next significant milestone will be reaching a distance of one light day (approximately 25.9 billion kilometers) from the Sun, projected for January 2027—coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of its launch.

While it is anticipated that Voyager 1 will still be operational at that time, engineers may need to deactivate some scientific instruments as its radioisotope power sources deplete.

Despite the vast distances involved, these achievements highlight the incredible journey of Voyager 1.

For context, Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system, is about 4.24 light-years away, which would take Voyager 1 approximately 74,000 years to reach at its current speed.

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A Delta Boeing 767-300ER departed Los Angeles Sunday, January 19 2025 at 07:08 PST then was vectored above the Vandenberg Air Force base while a Space X Falcon 9 launch was in progress.

During the live broadcast, a voice could be heard in the control room: “Hold, hold, hold!” And then, “Held for a possible aircraft in the airspace.”

The Delta flight DL480 departed LAX airport to Honolulu, was operated by a 26-year-old aircraft (registration N169DZ).

The B767 (216 passengers on board) encroaching on the restricted airspace meant that SpaceX was forced to delay the launch until Monday at the earliest.

“The Delta crew on flight 480 continues to follow ATC instruction along its journey from Los Angeles (LAX) to Honolulu (HNL). The flight is en route to HNL with no issue.”

Delta spokesperson

 The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to open an investigation into how ATC controllers came to instruct the pilots of DL480 to fly through a TFR.

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All telemetry and communications with the spacecraft have been severed, with SpaceX’s livestream confirming this as an “anomaly.”

The statement, “We are assuming the ship has been lost,” was made, signaling a major setback for the ambitious Starship program.

The Starship was “auto destroyed” by the Flight Termination System (FDS).

Starship’s FDS is a crucial safety feature, allowing the vehicle to be remotely detonated if it deviates off course, or has a chance of putting people in danger.

This flight, which aimed to push the boundaries of human space exploration, was watched by millions, showcasing the potential of what could be humanity’s next step towards Mars.

However, the loss of contact has raised concerns and questions about the safety and reliability of the Starship system. SpaceX has not provided further details on the cause of the anomaly, but this incident marks a significant moment in the journey of the world’s most powerful rocket. Stay tuned for updates as SpaceX investigates this unexpected turn in their quest for reusable space travel.

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Fragments of space debris fell within a village in Makueni County, Kenya.

The object was determined to be a separation ring from a rocket, weighing over 1,000 pounds and eight feet in diameter.

A separation ring is a part of a spacecraft. According to NASA, “Rockets typically come in stages, each optimized for different parts of the launch. When each stage has finished its part, it drops away, allowing the smaller remainder to continue on its journey.”

On Tuesday morning, Kenya Space Agency officials, alongside a multi-agency team were able to secure the area and recover the debris promptly.

“We want to assure the public that the object poses no immediate threat to safety,” the Kenya Space Agency said in an official statement issued Wednesday. “Our experts will analyze the object, use existing frameworks to identify the owner, and keep the public informed of the next steps and outcomes.”

While this is the first incident of its kind in Kenya, space debris has been rising in the recent past. In 2023, NASA was sued over a piece of falling space debris that crashed into a Florida home. Earlier this year, the European Space Agency said a satellite that weighed as much as an adult male rhinoceros entered the Earth’s atmosphere and crashed over the North Pacific Ocean between Alaska and Hawaii.

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As a result, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose jaunt to the International Space Station was originally supposed to see them back home in a matter of days, now won’t be home for Valentine’s Day either.

Boeing was slated to have completed Starliner’s crewed test flight by 2017, but the vehicle, dubbed “Calypso” by its crew, didn’t rumble off the launchpad in Florida until last summer.

By then the program was already more than $1.5 billion over budget, a reality that must have been even harder to stomach when the spacecraft suffered technical issues during its trip to the ISS.

Initially officials tried to downplay the reality that five of its 28 thrusters (which help the astronauts steer) failed to fire and that the one helium leak Starliner had taken off with had turned into several.

But while they continued to issue statements of full confidence in Starliner’s ability to make its return journey without incident, officials tucked in the fact that they were pushing back the timeline for when Williams, the crew pilot, and Williams, the crew commander, would clamber back into Starliner for their return flight home.

In August, NASA finally called it, announcing that Boeing’s Starliner would conduct its return flight sans crew while the crew would be hitching a ride home on competitor SpaceX’s Crew-Dragon. Williams and Wilmore joined Crew-9, who arrived in September, for a routine ISS mission that was scheduled to fly home no earlier than February, once the team had handed things off to their replacements on Crew-10.

NASA reshuffled their crew plans to ensure that there’d be seats for Williams and Wilmore aboard Crew-9’s return flight.

However, SpaceX’s Crew-10 launch has now been delayed a month to give the folks at SpaceX and NASA time to look over and prepare a new Crew Dragon vehicle, due to arrive at SpaceX’s processing facility to be prepped for launch in January.

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Virgin Galactic Holdings and Ente Nazionale per l’Aviazione Civile announced the signing of an Agreement of Cooperation to jointly study the feasibility of Virgin Galactic conducting spaceflight operations from Grottaglie Spaceport in the Puglia region of Southern Italy.

The study, with phase one expected to complete in 2025, will evaluate technical requirements, airspace compatibility, and regulatory alignment for suborbital spaceflight operations.

The project aims to establish a center of excellence for commercial suborbital transportation in the Mediterranean basin.

The study will evaluate Grottaglie’s airspace compatibility with Virgin Galactic’s requirements and unique flight profile. This will include examining any regulatory requirements, studying the facilities infrastructure and ensuring supply chain capability to support multiple spaceflights per week.

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SpaceX’s Starship is set to take off its fifth test flight as Elon Musk pushes ahead in his quest to build the most powerful operational rocket system in history.

Being able to land the booster safely increases its chances of being rapidly reusable, which would reduce the costs of spacefaring.

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After completing six orbits of Earth at this altitude, Dragon performed a series of descent burns to reach an orbit of ~190 x 700 km for today’s spacewalk while simultaneously continuing to safely lower its interior’s pressure, bringing the cabin environment closer to conditions required for the EVA.

The crew also spent a few hours demonstrating the suit’s pressurized mobility, verifying positions and accessibility in microgravity along with preparing the cabin for the EVA.

The first-ever private spacewalk is expected to start at 5:58 a.m. EDT (0958 GMT).

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