Brent Pin­heiro

Se­nior Re­porter

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Lo­cal car­ri­er Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) was one of sev­er­al air­lines that ex­pe­ri­enced flight dis­rup­tions af­ter a SpaceX Star­ship broke up in the at­mos­phere ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8 min­utes and 30 sec­onds af­ter launch­ing from Texas on Thurs­day. This was an un­crewed test flight.

SpaceX said in a state­ment post­ed on their web­site: “Ini­tial da­ta in­di­cates a fire de­vel­oped in the aft sec­tion of the ship, lead­ing to a rapid un­sched­uled dis­as­sem­bly with de­bris falling in­to the At­lantic Ocean with­in the pre­de­fined haz­ard ar­eas. Star­ship flew with­in its des­ig­nat­ed launch cor­ri­dor – as all US launch­es do to safe­guard the pub­lic both on the ground, on wa­ter, and in the air.”

The re­sult­ing de­bris field forced sev­er­al air­craft, in­clud­ing BW526 and BW550, both en route to New York, to ei­ther di­vert or go in­to hold­ing pat­terns as they wait­ed for clear­ance to con­tin­ue their jour­neys. Videos on so­cial me­dia short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent showed de­bris streak­ing through the at­mos­phere over the Turks and Caicos. The US Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FAA) con­firmed that it “briefly slowed and di­vert­ed air­craft.”

A re­lease from Caribbean Air­lines con­firmed that the two flights were af­fect­ed by “air­space clo­sures,” but the air­line said its oth­er ser­vices and op­er­a­tions re­mained un­af­fect­ed. BW550, op­er­at­ing as BW3550, de­part­ed Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al (POS) just af­ter 10 pm on Thurs­day. BW526, op­er­at­ing as BW3526, de­part­ed POS just af­ter mid­night on Fri­day morn­ing.

This is SpaceX’s first Star­ship flight test for 2025, but Star­ship’s sev­enth test flight over­all. The com­pa­ny said in a state­ment it will, in co­or­di­na­tion with the FAA, con­duct a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The com­pa­ny fur­ther stat­ed that it will im­ple­ment cor­rec­tive ac­tion as it pre­pares for an eighth flight test.

The Star­ship sys­tem at Star­base in Bo­ca Chi­ca, Texas. Pho­to: SpaceX

Ac­cord­ing to SpaceX, the Star­ship is a “ful­ly reusable trans­porta­tion sys­tem de­signed to car­ry both crew and car­go to Earth or­bit, the Moon, Mars, and be­yond.”

Star­ship is made up of two launch com­po­nents: the Star­ship space­craft and the Su­per Heavy rock­et. The Su­per Heavy rock­et is used to launch the Star­ship space­craft in­to the at­mos­phere be­fore re­turn­ing to Earth at the launch site. Star­ship is the sec­ond stage of the Star­ship sys­tem and, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, not on­ly is it ca­pa­ble of trans­port­ing peo­ple and car­go in­to space, but it is al­so ca­pa­ble of ‘point-to-point’ trans­port on Earth. The ship will en­able trav­el to any­where in the world in one hour or less.