SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded just minutes into its seventh test flight, an unexpected setback after the Elon Musk-led company had made steady progress advancing the vehicle’s capabilities.

While the top section of the rocket was lost, SpaceX succeeded in another complicated maneuver, bringing the spacecraft’s Super Heavy lower portion back down to Earth and catching it in midair using giant mechanical arms.

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The largest and most powerful rocket ever built lifted off the launchpad at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas at 4:37 p.m. local time Thursday. It was supposed to attempt to reach near orbital speeds and deploy 10 dummy spacecraft, designed to mimic the size, shape and weight of the upgraded SpaceX Starlink satellites that Starship will be launching in the future.

It was to be the first time Starship attempted to deploy cargo in space, an important milestone in readying the rocket for operational use.

But a little under 8 1/2-minutes into the mission, SpaceX lost communications with Starship. Launch commentators then said the vehicle had been “lost.” Musk later reposted a video on his social media site X of debris falling from the sky, saying “success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed.”

In a later post, Musk said preliminary indicators pointed to an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity.

“Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month,” he said.

Thursday’s mission marked the shortest Starship test flight since November 2023, when SpaceX lost the vehicle about eight minutes into its second-ever launch. The apparent explosion was an unexpected turn after SpaceX had repeatedly made progress with its Starship test flights, pushing the vehicle further with each new launch attempt.