SpaceX’s Starship rocket reaches space but is intentionally destroyed mid-flight

SpaceX launched its second Starship rocket flight on Saturday, with the company pushing development of the mammoth vehicle past new milestones.

Liftoff came a few minutes after 8 a.m. ET from its Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas.

Starship flew for more than seven minutes, successfully separating from its booster before the rocket’s onboard system intentionally destroyed the vehicle mid-flight.

No people were on board the test flight.

“We have lost the data from the second stage … what we do believe right now is that the Automated Flight Termination System on the second stage appears to have triggered very late in the burn,” John Insprucker, SpaceX principal integration engineer, said on the company’s webcast.

The flight termination system is a standard safety feature in rockets, as it destroys the vehicle if a problem arises or it flies off course. On SpaceX’s webcast, Starship appears to have been detonated at an altitude of about 148 kilometers (or about 485,000 feet). That is a little under half the altitude at which the International Space Station orbits the Earth.

After reaching space, Starship was planned to fly most of the way around the Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii.

“An incredibly successful day, even though we did have a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ both of the Super Heavy booster and the ship,” SpaceX quality engineering manager Kate Tice said on the webcast.

The Federal Aviation Administration cleared SpaceX for a second launch attempt earlier this week.

SpaceX first launched a full Starship rocket system in April. Although that flight did not reach space, it successfully achieved…