The loss of signal occurred at roughly the same point during this mission as with Flight 7 in January, when Starship exploded over populated islands in Turks and Caicos, littering the islands with debris. It has not been confirmed where exactly the vehicle exploded during Thursday’s mission. But the explosion was visible from parts of Florida and over the Caribbean, according to reports from residents of those locations that were shared with CNN. The Federal Aviation Administration halted flights into Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and Orlando airports Thursday evening for “falling space debris” until 8 p.m. ET. The FAA also temporarily kept flights from departing from Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport and Miami International Airport. Flights leaving those airports were still delayed on average by 30 and 45 minutes, respectively, as of Thursday night. Judy Burgett captured footage from Marathon, Florida, showing Starship’s fireball gradually breaking apart as it flew eastward. Judy Burgett “We’ve got a lot of measures in place, like debris response areas, where we coordinate very closely with air traffic control,” Huot said on the livestream. “We have a lot of measures put (in place) before we ever launch a rocket to make sure that we’re keeping the public safe. Those worked last time and they’re actively in work right now.” SpaceX shared an update with a few details on the incident several hours after the flight. “Prior to the end of the ascent burn, an energetic event in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines,” according to a statement from SpaceX. “This in turn led to a loss of attitude control and ultimately a loss of communications with Starship. Final contact with Starship came approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds after liftoff.” SpaceX said that Starship flew within a designated launch corridor. “Any surviving debris would have fallen within the pre-planned Debris Response Area,” according to the statement. “There are no toxic materials present in the debris and no significant impacts expected to occur to marine species or water quality. If you believe you have identified a piece of debris, please contact your local authorities or the SpaceX Debris Hotline at 1-866-623-0234 or at recovery@spacex.com.” This depicts the satellite-filled sky that is now a reality and getting more crowded every week! This adds together exposures taken over just 30 minutes on an early June night when, from my latitude of 51° N satellites even in low Earth orbit are lit all night by sunlight. Many of the parallel streaks heading generally horizontal west to east (right to left) may be from groups of SpaceX Starlinks. Others traveling vertically north-south are more likely from Earth observation satellites. There is at least one natural streak in the image — a meteor at centre, caught by chance on one frame. It appears as a colored and tapered streak. Other uniform undashed streaks may be from high-altitude satellites moving much more slowly. By comparison, most satellites appear as dashed lines because the image is a blend of many 2-second-long exposures with a gap of one second between exposures when the camera shutter was closed. So the motion of the satellites and image stacking turns them into dashes. The longer the dashes, the faster the satellite is traveling, with the fastest satellites being the lowest. This is looking due south and all the trails disappear low in the south above the trees, as that's where the Earth's shadow is, even on this June night. So the satellites aren't lit when they are in that small part of the sky. They emerge from the shadow heading north and disappear into the shadow heading south. The shadow creates the obvious boundary of where satellite trails are visible. At other times of the year low-orbit satellites are visible only after sunset or before sunrise, especially from lower latitudes. But not near summer solstice, and from higher latitudes. The field of view is about 100° by 75°. (Photo by: Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group/Getty Images Related article What is ‘Kessler Syndrome’ — and why do some scientists think the space disaster scenario has already started?