A SpaceX Starship's upper stage exploded minutes after launch from Texas on Thursday, and the rocket was declared a "loss" in the seventh test flight of the heavy-lift spacecraft. The mission was unmanned.

SpaceX readies its seventh test flight of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever designed. The trial will test upgrades to the spacecraft and deploy mock satellites.

SpaceX is set to launch the seventh test flight of its Starship megarocket on Thursday (Jan. 16), and you can watch the action live. The 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship is scheduled to lift off from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas Thursday at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT; 4 p.m. local Texas time).

In the lead-up to this launch, SpaceX confirmed it planned to launch a new version of Starship. The updated spacecraft was about 6.5 feet (2 meters) taller than the last one. It also included a raft of internal upgrades to avionics and propulsion to bring Starship closer to orbital operations.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is collaborating with SpaceX and other authorities to verify reports of damage to public property on the Turks

While Elon Musk’s spaceflight company repeated a spectacular catch of its powerful booster stage, the upper stage experienced a catastrophic malfunction.

James Temple was "in the right place at the right time" to take these dramatic images of SpaceX's Starship's seventh flight test disintegrating above the Atlantic Ocean

The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has suspended SpaceX rocket flights following the explosion of the upper stage of the Starship/Super Heavy. An investigation is necessary due to the space debris that fell to Earth after the explosion.