SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took to X on Thursday night to explain what his company believes may have caused part of the Starship rocket to experience a "rapid unscheduled disassembly."

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk described the explosion of the company’s Starship spacecraft during its seventh flight test Thursday as “barely a bump in the road,” underlining the momentum behind the commercial space giant.

SpaceX, the private space technology company owned by Elon Musk, is asking federal authorities to approve a new round of tests for a prototype reusable rocket, but some of them may never make it back to the surface intact and will crash in the ocean.

SpaceX launched Starship on Thursday for a seventh test flight, after weather concerns pushed back an experiment that will feature the spacecraft’s first payload deployment test, and while it successfully caught the Super Heavy Booster, Starship lost connection and “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

SpaceX's Starship was destroyed during its seventh test flight on Thursday night, with the rocket breaking apart less than 10 minutes after blasting off

SpaceX's Starship rocket prototype on Thursday broke apart during launch, leading to debris raining down across the Caribbean and grounding all nearby aircraft. The Starship launch took place in Boca Chica,

Elon Musk's 400ft Starship rocket blasted off from Boca Chica, south Texas, on Thursday at around 4.40pm local time. But the mission ended in disaster when the rocket exploded