Shrugging off bad weather, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched its powerful New Glenn rocket on its maiden flight early Thursday, lighting up a cloudy overnight sky as it climbed away from Cape Canaveral in a high-stakes bid to compete with Elon Musk's industry-leading SpaceX.

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."

This weekly newsletter on rockets provides definitive coverage of the global launch industry. The big news this week is the New Glenn and Starship missions.

SpaceX’s Starship prototype failed shortly after launch from Texas, disrupting Gulf air traffic and sparking safety concerns.

The upper stage of SpaceX's Starship rocket exploded minutes after launch from Texas on Thursday, leading the aerospace company to declare the vessel a "loss" in the seventh test flight of the heavy-lift spacecraft.

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.”

After exploding, the craft sent blazing debris across the sky and forced multiple aircraft flying over and near the Caribbean to divert.

Authorities in Turks and Caicos Islands confirmed they diverted all flights from airspace during the explosion and urged residents not to touch fallen debris.

The uncrewed New Glenn rocket took off at 2:03 a.m. EST from Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Blue Origin said.

SpaceX launched its Starship mega-rocket for the seventh time. It achieve an epic booster catch but the ship was lost.