FAA Halts Flights After Musk’s Starship Rocket Explodes and Rains Down Debris

AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson/MSNBC

The Federal Aviation Administration halted flights at multiple Florida airports after a SpaceX Starship rocket exploded on Thursday night.

Like the launch of SpaceX’s seventh Starship test flight, the eighth attempt also ended in the craft’s disintegration. About eight minutes after it launched from Brownsville, Texas, several engines appeared to fail, and the 400-foot-tall rocket was last seen spinning before communication was lost. Several users on social media posted videos of the rocket breaking apart and falling earthward.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk serves as a White House adviser to President Donald Trump. Musk’s companies – including SpaceX – have billions of dollars in contracts with the federal government, raising questions about his conflicts of interest, which the White House has said Musk will self-police.

CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean reported that the FAA had stopped all flights into Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and Orlando until 8 p.m. ET over concerns about falling “space launch debris.”

Since Trump took office, Musk has slashed personnel at various agencies and has even frozen congressionally appropriated spending. One of the agencies affected is the aforementioned FAA, which has laid off at least 400 employees who worked on air safety.

Shortly before the explosion, The Washington Post reported that it has a lease with the FAA to Starlink satellite kits “free-of-charge” to the agency. Musk has denied that Starlink – a SpaceX subsidiary – will take over a $2.4 billion FAA contract originally awarded to Verizon.