Astronauts orbiting 250 miles above Earth got a front-row seat to destruction on Thursday. During a SpaceX flight test of Starship, the world's most powerful rocket and spacecraft system, NASA 's Don Pettit snapped photos from the International Space Station of the ship blowing up.

X has run into serious issues trying to get a prototype upper stage of its Starship to launch into orbit, then make a soft landing.

Nearly two months after an explosion sent flaming debris raining down on the Turks and Caicos, SpaceX launched another mammoth Starship rocket on Thursday, but lost contact minutes into the test flight as the spacecraft came tumbling down and broke apart.