A fire in the aft section of SpaceX's Starship trigged the apparent explosion that destroyed the spacecraft, the company says.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told TechCrunch it had to "briefly" slow and divert a number of aircraft in the airspace near Puerto Rico, where

After exploding, the craft sent blazing debris across the sky and forced multiple aircraft flying over and near the Caribbean to divert.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk made light of Starship's fiery end. "Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!" he said on X.

After SpaceX’s Starship exploded over Turks and Caicos on Thursday, the FAA launched an investigation, demanding answers into the mishap.

On Friday, the FAA issued a mishap investigation against SpaceX after the upper stage of the Starship lost communications and then blew up during its seventh test flight on Thursday minutes after its launch from the company’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

The rocket company’s effort to demonstrate payload deployment, land its upper stage and potentially achieve spaceship-to-spaceship fuel transfer this year had an inauspicious start when the Starship system suffered a setback during the Jan. 16 flight. Minutes after launch, the Block 2 upper stage broke up when a fire developed in the aft section.

The FAA said that there has been no reports of injuries related to falling debris, but some public property in Turks and Caicos were reportedly damaged.

What happened to China's reusable rocket testbed? A Chinese state-owned company performed a rocket flight on January 18 (US time) aimed at testing reusable launch vehicle technology without announcing the outcome,

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Pieces of SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket are washing ashore after the latest test flight exploded over Turks and Caicos.