By Alimat Aliyeva

SpaceX's massive Starship spacecraft exploded in space on Thursday, just minutes after liftoff from Texas, prompting the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to temporarily halt air traffic in parts of Florida, Azernews reports.

In several videos shared on social media, flaming debris was seen streaking through the twilight sky near South Florida and the Bahamas after the Starship spacecraft's crash. This occurred shortly after the spacecraft began spinning uncontrollably with its engines turned off, as shown in a live broadcast of the SpaceX mission, according to Reuters.

This was the eighth test flight of Starship, and it ended in failure, just a month after the seventh test also resulted in an explosive mishap. The series of failures at such an early stage of the program, which SpaceX had previously overcome with relative ease, signals deeper issues in the program that Elon Musk had hoped to accelerate this year. The 123-meter-long rocket system has been central to Musk's ambitions of sending humans to Mars within this decade.

In response to the crash, the FAA briefly grounded flights at Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and Orlando airports due to concerns about "space debris." The FAA also announced that it had launched an investigation into the incident.

SpaceX later confirmed that there were no toxic materials among the debris.

The mission had planned for Starship to complete an almost full orbit around Earth before re-entering the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, simulating a landing sequence that SpaceX hopes to achieve on solid ground in the near future, marking a key step in the development of the rocket.