The explosion of a Starship spacecraft during a flight test Thursday afternoon caused commercial airlines to divert and delay their flights to avoid falling debris. Some airspace over the Caribbean was closed for roughly an hour and a half,

US regulators and government officials in Turks and Caicos are looking into reports of property damage in the island nation caused by debris falling after a SpaceX Starship vehicle exploded over the ocean during a test mission Thursday,

The company says that “Starship flew within its designated launch corridor” and “any surviving pieces of debris would have fallen into the designated hazard area.” The falling debris put on a show in the evening sky over the Caribbean and was captured by several tourists who seemed both amazed and slightly anxious about what they were witnessing.

The FAA is requiring an investigation after a SpaceX Starship rocket exploded yesterday eight and a half minutes into the company’s seventh flight test of the upgraded vehicle.

SpaceX has traced the likely cause of the explosion that destroyed its Starship vehicle during its Jan. 16 test flight to a leak of liquid oxygen or liquid methane.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday it will oversee an investigation by Elon Musk's SpaceX into an explosive Starship test flight the previous day that forced airlines to divert dozens of flights to avoid debris.

The explosion of a SpaceX rocket shortly after liftoff forced detours for dozens of planes as debris fell from the sky around the Turks and Caicos islands. Some of the planes had to declare fuel emergencies.