SpaceX's Starship vehicle explodes once again during 8th flight test: See photos

The upper portion of SpaceX's massive Starship spacecraft exploded once again minutes into its Thursday flight test, creating a cascade of fiery debris visible from Florida to the Caribbean.

The fiery mishap marked the second consecutive failure for the 400-foot spacecraft this year, which is being developed for future crewed missions to both the moon and Mars.

Following a delay from Monday, the uncrewed Starship launched on schedule at 6:30 p.m. EST from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, followed by the 165-foot vehicle separating from the 232-foot Super Heavy rocket booster.

The rocket booster itself successfully navigated back to the launch pad, where SpaceX was able to catch it with giant mechanical arms known as chopsticks in a tough maneuver the space exploration company has now pulled off three times. But flight operators lost contact with the Starship vehicle, known as the upper stage, less than 10 minutes into the flight.

That's about the same point in the mission that a loss of signal occurred in the previous flight test and January. And just as that communication breakdown presaged an explosion, so too did this one.

The explosion occurred despite SpaceX assuring that what mission teams learned from the seventh flight prompted them to make several modifications to the vehicle. The company provided more information on the cause of the explosion hours after the flight, while the Federal Aviation Administration is performing a mishap investigation.

But if you just want to see wild photos of the explosion and raining spacecraft debris, you've come to the right place.

Photos show fiery Starship explosion over Florida, Bahamas

Contributing: James Powel, USA TODAY

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]