In addition to a near-perfect launch, the craft flew for nearly an hour after lifting off from SpaceX’s private launch site in South Texas near the Gulf of Mexico at 9:25 a.m. Eastern. All 33 of the booster’s engines ignited successfully, and after nearly three minutes, the Starship spacecraft separated and began a journey across the globe powered by its six engines.
The mission, SpaceX’s third test flight of the Starship system, was eagerly awaited by NASA, which is investing $4 billion in developing Starship, which it intends to use to transport astronauts to the moon in the first two human landings since the Apollo era. SpaceX also intends to use the massive vehicle, which stands nearly 400 feet tall, to deploy the next generation of its Starlink internet satellites. Many in the science community are eager to use it to deploy large scientific instruments and telescopes into space.
“Congrats to @SpaceX on a successful test flight!” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote in a post on X. “Starship has soared into the heavens. Together, we are making great strides through Artemis to return humanity to the Moon—then look onward to Mars.”
The vehicle, collectively called Starship, is composed of the Super Heavy booster and a spacecraft that sits on top. The company already has several other rockets under production and hopes to fly again soon, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said.
On this flight, the rocket achieved a speed of more than 16,000 mph, which would have allowed the spacecraft to enter orbit around Earth. Instead, SpaceX commanded the spacecraft to reenter the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. After slamming into the thickening atmosphere, it generated heat of about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit and did not survive. The booster was also lost after it began to tumble as it fell back to Earth over the Gulf of Mexico.
Still, it was the most successful Starship flight by far.
“It’s incredible to see how much further we got this time around,” Dan Huot, a SpaceX spokesman, said during the company’s live broadcast.
“This is just a phenomenal test so far,” SpaceX engineer Siva Bharadvaj said. “Super Heavy is performing beautifully today.”
With each flight, SpaceX has gotten better at flying Starship, learning from each test mission and then using the data it collects to continue to tweak the vehicle’s hardware, software and ground systems.
“Each of these flight tests continue to be just that: a test,” SpaceX said in a statement before Thursday’s flight. “They aren’t occurring in a lab or on a test stand but are putting flight hardware in a flight environment to maximize learning.”
During the first flight, in April 2023, several of the main engines failed during liftoff and more failed as it ascended. The force of the rocket blew up its launchpad and sent debris flying into the Texas shoreline. That triggered a lawsuit from environmentalists, who are concerned about the massive rocket’s impact on the surrounding area.
For the second flight, SpaceX installed a water deluge system to its pad, which dampened the blast, and made upgrades to the rocket’s engines. The vehicle made it through stage separation, and the upper-stage engines fired as well. But as the booster started to ignite 13 of its engines to fly the rocket back to Earth, one engine failed, “quickly cascading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly” — the phrase SpaceX uses to describe the loss of a vehicle. The spacecraft was lost after a leak led to a fire and its autonomous onboard flight termination system destroyed the vehicle.
After the flight, the FAA oversaw SpaceX’s investigation and, in February, said it had accepted the company’s report. As a result, the FAA required SpaceX to complete 17 corrective actions, which included hardware redesigns, updates to engine-control algorithms and installation of fire protection measures.
SpaceX said that “upgrades derived from the flight test will debut on the next Starship and Super Heavy vehicles.”
On this mission, SpaceX also tested opening and closing the payload doors through which it would deploy satellites to orbit. And since SpaceX intends to eventually refuel its Starship spacecraft while in orbit, the company also attempted to transfer propellant on this flight from one tank to another.
It was not immediately clear if those tests were successful. “We do still need to do some data review on those,” Bharadvaj said. “So as we get that data back, we’ll be sure to update you on social [media] for how those tests went.”
As the Starship spacecraft began reentering the atmosphere cameras on board the spacecraft showed images of the intense heat building up around the vehicle, engulfing it in a fireball. SpaceX had installed terminals for its Starlink internet satellite system on the spacecraft, which allowed for the stunning video to broadcast on its livestream until the heat finally overtook the system.
As expected, communication with the spacecraft was lost as it plunged through the thickening atmosphere. After a few minutes, however, SpaceX said that the spacecraft, known as Ship 28, did not survive reentry.
“We are making the call now that we have lost Ship 28,” he said. The company had hoped to fly the ship all the way to the surface of Indian Ocean, where it was expected to hit hard and explode.
It was unclear where exactly the ship was when the mission ended, but Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who tracks spacecraft, said his analysis showed it likely was lost about 620 miles southeast of Mauritius over the Indian Ocean.
Still, the flight will give SpaceX engineers lots of information to review that they will use in the next flight.
“The further we could fly, and the more data we could collect, was always the biggest win,” SpaceX engineer Kate Tice said.
