Pallade Veneta - Musk's SpaceX faces setback with new Starship upper stage loss

Minutes after liftoff and booster separation, a video live feed showed the upper stage tumbling uncontrollably, with signal soon cutting out.

"Can confirm we did lose contact with the ship. Unfortunately, this happened last time, too," SpaceX official Dan Huot said, alluding to the January launch that saw the upper stage explode over the Caribbean, raining debris.

The new setback could fuel questions over Musk's attention to his space company, as the billionaire spends most of his time in Washington leading President Donald Trump's government overhaul efforts.

That work has also prompted mounted scrutiny over Musk's influence on the US government space program.

Starship, the world's biggest and most powerful launch vehicle, successfully blasted off from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas shortly after 5:30 pm (2330 GMT).

It was Starship's eighth orbital mission -- all so far uncrewed -- and the first since its dramatic mid-air explosion over the Caribbean during its last trial.

Earlier attempts to carry out the test were called off on Monday and Wednesday.

Despite losing contact with the upper stage again, SpaceX managed to return the huge booster stage to the launch tower -- catching it with arms called "chopsticks." It was the third time SpaceX completed the tricky engineering feat.

About 40 minutes after the launch, Spacex turned off its livestream and the fate of the errant upper stage was not immediately known.

- 'Mishap investigation' -

Standing 403 feet (123 meters) tall -- about 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. Starship is designed to eventually be fully reusable and is key to Musk's vision of colonizing Mars.

Meanwhile, NASA is awaiting a modified version of Starship as a lunar lander for its Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon this decade.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded Starship after its flight on January 16 ended with the upper stage disintegrating in a fiery cascade over the Turks and Caicos Islands, prompting cleanup efforts for fallen debris.

Last Friday, the FAA announced that Starship could proceed with its next flight before the agency finalizes its review of SpaceX's "mishap investigation."

During Joe Biden's presidency, Musk frequently accused the FAA of excessively scrutinizing SpaceX over safety and environmental concerns.

Now, as Trump's cost-cutter-in-chief, the world's richest person faces allegations of wielding undue influence over regulatory agencies overseeing his companies.

According to Bloomberg News, a SpaceX engineer went to FAA headquarters two weeks ago and told employees they risked losing their jobs if they did not start work on a program to deploy thousands of the company's Starlink satellite terminals in support of the national airspace system.

Telecoms giant Verizon currently has a contract to upgrade the FAA's infrastructure but now risks losing it, Bloomberg added. SpaceX said in a post that "recent media reports about SpaceX and the FAA are false."

For the new flight Thursday, SpaceX says it had introduced numerous upgrades to the upper-stage spaceship that enhance its reliability and performance.

Additionally, Starship was supposed to deploy Starlink simulators designed to mimic Starlink satellites, which will burn up upon atmospheric re-entry.

Eventually, SpaceX aims to recover the upper stage as well, but for now, it is targeting splashdown in the Indian Ocean off the western coast of Australia, as in previous flights.

R.Zaccone--PV