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SpaceX\u2019s Starship spiraled out of control while in space during a test flight Thursday, marking the second launch in a row<\/a> that the vehicle\u00a0has run into a fatal problem on its way to orbit.<\/p>\n The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) briefly halted<\/a> flights into major Florida airports and appears to have diverted<\/a> some others out of caution of \u201cspace launch debris.\u201d The agency told TechCrunch that it is requiring SpaceX to perform what\u2019s known as a mishap investigation into the failure.<\/p>\n The company launched Starship using its Super Heavy booster and things looked normal for the first eight minutes of the flight. The ship successfully separated and headed into space, while the booster came back to the company\u2019s launchpad in Texas, where it was caught<\/a> for a third time by the launch tower.<\/p>\n But at around eight minutes and nine seconds into the flight, SpaceX\u2019s broadcast graphics showed Starship lose multiple Raptor engines on the vehicle. On-board footage showed the ship started spiraling end over end over the ocean.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just saw some engines go out, it looks like we are losing attitude control of the ship,\u201d SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said on the broadcast. \u201cAt this point we have lost contact with the ship.\u201d <\/p>\n Footage<\/a> posted to social media showed the ship breaking up over the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic a few minutes later<\/a>. The company posted<\/a> to X that it \u201cimmediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses.\u201d<\/p>\n The high-profile back-to-back explosions come as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has spent the last few weeks causing chaos across the U.S. federal government with his Department of Government Efficiency<\/a>. That has included him deploying employees to the FAA, which oversees SpaceX\u2019s flights.<\/p>\n SpaceX was hoping to deploy four dummy versions of its Starlink satellites during Thursday\u2019s test flight, a step towards the goal of using Starship for commercial missions. The company has been purposely developing Starship by doing test flights in rapid succession, and learning from the things that go both right and wrong. <\/p>\n But Thursday\u2019s failure comes just a few weeks after the seventh test flight<\/a>, which saw Starship break up in spectacular fashion over the islands of Turks & Caicos, which caused the FAA to divert a number of flights in that airspace.<\/p>\n SpaceX performed a mishap investigation into that failure. The company determined propellant was leaking inside<\/a> Starship, which caused fires and a communications blackout with the ship before it self-destructed.<\/p>\n Ahead of this test flight, SpaceX said it made improvements to the lines that send fuel to Starship\u2019s engines and changed the temperature of the propellant. It also added extra vents and \u201ca new purge system\u201d to better hedge against any leaks.<\/p>\n On some of its previous test flights, SpaceX saw its Starship break up as it attempted to re-enter the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. The company rolled out changes on the seventh test flight that were supposed to help it learn how to better prepare the ship to survive that re-entry. <\/p>\n \u201cWith Flight 8, we\u2019re focused on finding the real-world limits of Starship so we can prepare to eventually return Starship to the launch site and catch it,\u201d the company wrote<\/a> on X on Thursday. <\/p>\n