SpaceX's Starship spacecraft has tumbled and exploded in space just minutes after lifting off from Texas.
The explosion doomed an attempt to deploy mock satellites in the second consecutive failure this year for Elon Musk's Mars rocket program.
The failure comes just over a month after the company's seventh Starship flight also ended in an explosive failure.
The back-to-back mishaps occurred in early mission phases that SpaceX has easily surpassed previously, indicating serious setbacks for a program Mr Musk has sought to speed up this year.
"Unfortunately this happened last time too, so we've got some practice now," SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said on the live stream.
"During Starship's ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost," SpaceX said in a statement.
The Starship failure in January ended eight minutes into flight when the rocket exploded in space, raining debris over Caribbean islands and causing minor damage to a car in the Turks and Caicos Islands. »
