- Airlines face a growing headache over rocket launches after Starship's fiery liftoff last week.
- Elon Musk's megarocket exploded over Turks and Caicos, sparking airspace closures and chaos.
- Experts say the new commercial space race threatens more disruption for airlines.
Elon Musk celebrated Starship's explosive launch last week, writing on X that "entertainment is guaranteed." For some pilots and passengers, it was anything but entertaining.
On Thursday, the upper stage of SpaceX's mammoth Starship rocket exploded shortly after launching for the seventh time. Dramatic videos and images posted on social media showed fiery trails of debris streaking across the sky near Turks and Caicos.
What SpaceX described as the rocket's "rapid unscheduled disassembly" sparked chaos. Some airspace in the Caribbean was closed for about an hour and a half.
The Federal Aviation Administration activated a Debris Response Area, which it said is used if a space vehicle's debris falls outside identified hazard areas.
Numerous flights entered holding patterns, circling as they waited for the debris to pass.
Four Delta Air Lines flights diverted for refueling purposes because of the closed airspace, an airline spokesperson told Business Insider. Flights from JetBlue and Amazon Air were also among those forced to change course as the FAA warned of a risk of being hit by chunks of the rocket as it fell to Earth.
"SpaceX had a rocket launch and, uh, it didn't go so well," an air-traffic controller said in an audio recording archived by LiveATC.net. One pilot reported seeing "a major streak" of debris "going from at least 60 miles with all these different colors."
As the chaos set in, pilots complained to air-traffic control and expressed concerns about fuel levels. One pilot from the Spanish airline Iberia appeared to run out of patience, declaring mayday so he could pass through the Debris Response Area and land in Puerto Rico.
Those not already heading to Puerto Rico couldn't divert there; a controller explained, per LiveATC.net, that there was no parking space because of congestion.
"It's been a rough day," he added.
Rockets and planes face off
The incident — after which the FAA launched an investigation and temporarily grounded future Starship launches — is the latest disruption airlines have faced as a result of space launch activities.
This month, the Australian flag carrier Qantas described the disruption it had faced because of SpaceX.
It said it had to delay several flights between Johannesburg and Sydney because of the reentry of SpaceX rockets over "an extensive area" of the southern Indian Ocean.
While the booster, or first stage, of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is reusable, the upper stage is disposed of in the ocean. Qantas is asking SpaceX to be more precise with the areas and timings for such events.
Disruption has occurred in both directions.
SpaceX was preparing to launch a Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday but called off the launch with 11 seconds to go. An aircraft was thought to have encroached on the launch zone, though it's unclear which aircraft, if any, was to blame.
Space race puts airlines under pressure
Airlines and rocket companies are likely to find themselves sharing the sky even more in the coming years as the commercial space race heats up.
Hours before Starship's fiery demise, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched its giant New Glenn rocket for the first time.
The Amazon cofounder's rocket company joins a handful of rivals, including SpaceX and Rocket Lab, in reaching orbit. All three companies are planning to dramatically increase their number of launches in the coming years, with SpaceX planning as many as 25 Starship launches and at least 180 Falcon 9 launches in 2025.
"The problem is there because we have also not only an increase in the number of launches but also an increase in the number of entities with launch capabilities," Luciano Anselmo, an aerospace engineer at the Space Flight Dynamics Laboratory in Pisa, Italy, told BI.
"Just coordinating all these different actors is quite demanding," he said. "The system as it is up to now is under a little bit of stress."
Anselmo added that the increased cadence of launches and the inherent riskiness of the space industry mean further incidents like the Starship explosion are unavoidable.
Related stories
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Ewan Wright, a doctoral candidate at the University of British Columbia who studies space debris, told BI that unplanned disruption from rocket explosions and controlled reentries of upper-stage rockets could have a significant economic effect on airlines, as delays and diversions in the air can be costlier than those on the ground.
Out of control
The bigger concern for Wright and Anselmo, however, is uncontrolled entries — large satellites or rockets that are left abandoned in orbit to plunge down to Earth at random.
It's harder to predict where these objects might fall, as opposed to controlled reentries or debris from rockets that explode midflight.
"The uncertainties are massive," Wright said, adding that forecasts are often so vague as to be "totally useless from an aviation perspective."
One such incident happened in 2022, when part of China's Long March 5B rocket made an uncontrolled reentry into the atmosphere. In response, Spain briefly closed part of its airspace, though Italy and Portugal, which were also in the rocket's path, did not. Long March 5B eventually splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
Though the chance of an aircraft being hit by a piece of debris from an uncontrolled reentry is low, Anselmo said the risk of such an incident was growing.
Anselmo said that with the number of controlled and uncontrolled reentries rising, regulators, launchers, and airlines will eventually have to discuss who pays for the growing risk of disruption to commercial flights.
The Outer Space Treaty and the Liability Convention, widely ratified agreements that form the basis of international space law, say that the "launching State" has absolute liability for any damage that falling space objects cause to the Earth's surface or to any aircraft. It's unclear whether that applies to travel disruption caused by such debris.
"If you do start closing airspace more and more frequently, then that is going to cost airlines money," Wright said.
"I think this is a sign of things to come," he added. "These things have a price, and they will happen more frequently."