What was falling from the sky over South Florida on Thursday? A space ship — sort of.

Was it a meteor shower over South Florida? A plane on fire? Something extraterrestrial?

People in South Florida looked to the sky Thursday night and wondered what the fiery, falling streaks were.

After the SpaceX launched its Starship rocket Thursday evening from Texas, on its eighth flight test, it “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost,” the company said in a post on X.

The rocket lifted off just after 6:30 p.m. EST from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. The flight profile called for the Super Heavy booster to fly back to the launch tower caught on the tower’s pivoting arms called chopsticks.

The upper stage Starship then was supposed to continue halfway around the planet to attempt a water landing in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia.

But teams lost contact again over the Atlantic.

Debris from the explosion falling over the Atlantic Ocean delayed some flights to South Florida on Thursday evening, with Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Palm Beach International Airport and Miami International Airport briefly having ground stops issued, spokespersons said. All had been lifted by 7:30 p.m.

A video shared with the South Florida Sun Sentinel taken in Delray Beach shows a cluster of fiery, sparkling streaks falling, resembling meteors.

The airports in Fort Lauderdale and Miami continued to experience some slight delays in departures after the stops were lifted due to the debris, according to the Federal Aviation Administration’s website.

The space-skimming flight was supposed to last an hour and couldn’t release the mock satellites into space as planned. The spacecraft reached nearly 90 miles in altitude before trouble struck. It was not immediately clear where it came down.

The Starship spacecraft is “designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond,” the company’s website says, and touts it as “the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed.”

Thursday’s launch comes nearly two months after flaming debris fell over Turks and Caicos likely from a fire that caused its Starship to break apart, the Associated Press reported.

“We will review the data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause,” the company said in its post on X. “As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship’s reliability.”

Orlando Sentinel staff writer Richard Tribou contributed to this report. 

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.