Tag: Starship

SpaceX executed the most successful flight test of its super-powerful Starship launch system to date, featuring Starship’s first-ever payload deployment and a thrilling Indian Ocean splashdown. Today’s 10th test flight followed three earlier missions that fell short of full success.

Starship’s Super Heavy booster rose from SpaceX’s Starbase launch pad in South Texas at 6:30 p.m. CT (4:30 p.m. PT) after a trouble-free countdown. The first launch attempt had to be called off on Aug. 24 due to a leaky hose in the ground support system, and a second attempt was scrubbed on Aug. 25 because of unacceptable weather.

During today’s liftoff, all 33 of the booster’s methane-fueled Raptor engines lit up to send the upper stage, known as Ship 37, to a height of more than 110 miles (180 kilometers). After stage separation, Ship’s six Raptor engines took over, and Super Heavy conducted a series of test maneuvers before sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.

“Incredible flight for booster today,” SpaceX engineer Amanda Lee said during today’s webcast.

Halfway through its not-quite-orbital trip, Ship 37 opened a slot to deploy eight thin Starlink satellite simulators, in a manner reminiscent of cranking out candies from a Pez dispenser. Hundreds of SpaceX employees cheered as they watched space-to-ground video feeds at Starbase and at the company’s HQ in California. The dummy satellites were designed to burn up during atmospheric re-entry.

Today’s successful deployment buoyed SpaceX’s confidence that in the future, each Starship mission will be able to deploy scores of next-generation satellites for the Starlink broadband data constellation.

The end of today’s test mission came when Ship made a blazing descent through the atmosphere. At one point, a webcam picked up a view of debris flying off from the skirt around the engines at the bottom of the rocket ship. Yet another shot showed red-hot material being blasted away from Ship 37’s control flaps.

“We’re kind of being mean to this Starship,” SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot said. “We’re really trying to see what are its limits. … We are pushing it beyond essentially what we think we’ll have to fly at.”

Despite the damage, Ship 37 was able to relight its rocket engines, flip around and splash down into the Indian Ocean. Then it exploded into flames. The whole test flight took just a little more than an hour.

“We promised maximum excitement. Starship delivered,” Huot said.

SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket got off to a great start today for its ninth flight test, but the second stage ran into a host of issues and made an uncontrolled re-entry.

The 400-foot-tall rocket’s first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, rose from its Starbase launch pad in Texas just after 6:30 p.m. CT (4:30 p.m. PT) with all 33 methane-fueled engines blazing. Cheers erupted from SpaceX’s teams in Texas and at the company’s HQ in California.

But the second stage, known as Ship, wasn’t able to open its payload doors for what would have been Starship’s first-ever payload deployment. The plan had called for Ship to send a set of eight Starlink satellite simulators into space. Instead, the experiment was scrubbed.

Minutes later, the Starship team got worse news: As the Ship headed toward a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean, it began spinning uncontrollably. SpaceX commentator Dan Huot said the second stage lost attitude control, apparently due to propellant leaks.

“Not looking great with a lot of our on-orbit objectives today,” he said. Ship broke up as it descended over a wide swath of open ocean that had been cleared for the splashdown.

For the second time in a row, SpaceX lost the second stage of its Starship launch system during a flight test, while recovering the first-stage Super Heavy booster.

Today’s eighth Starship flight test came a month and a half after a similarly less-than-perfect mission that sparked an investigation.

“The primary reason we do these flight tests is to learn,” SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot said. “We have some more to learn about this vehicle.”

SpaceX’s seventh flight test of its massive Starship launch system brought good news as well as not-so-great news.

The good news? The Super Heavy booster successfully flew itself back to the Texas launch site and was caught above the ground by the launch tower’s chopstick-style mechanical arms. That’s only the second “Mechazilla” catch to be done during the Starship test program.

The bad news is that the upper stage, known as Ship 33, was lost during its ascent.

“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause,” SpaceX said in a post-mission posting to X. “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability.”

SpaceX’s Starship launch system went through its sixth flight test today, and although the Super Heavy booster missed out on being caught back at its launch pad, the mission checked off a key test objective with President-elect Donald Trump in the audience.

Trump attended the launch at SpaceX’s Starbase complex in the company of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has been serving as a close adviser to the once and future president over the past few months. In a pre-launch posting to his Truth Social media platform, Trump wished good luck to “Elon Musk and the Great Patriots involved in this incredible project.”

For the first time ever, SpaceX has followed through on a Starship test launch by bringing back the Super Heavy booster for an on-target catch in the arms of its “Mechazilla” launch-tower cradle in Texas.

“This is a day for the engineering history books,” SpaceX launch commentator Kate Tice said.

Today’s successful catch marks a giant step toward using — and reusing — Starship for missions ranging from satellite deployments to NASA’s moon missions to migrations to Mars.

SpaceX’s Starship earned high marks today in its fourth uncrewed flight test, making significant progress in the development of a launch system that’s tasked with putting NASA astronauts on the moon by as early as 2026.

The Super Heavy booster blasted off from SpaceX’s Starbase complex in South Texas at 7:50 a.m. CT (5:50 a.m. PT), rising into the sky with 32 of its 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines blazing. Super Heavy is considered the world’s most powerful launch vehicle, with 16.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

Minutes after launch, the rocket’s upper stage — known as the Ship — separated from the first stage, firing up its own set of six Raptor engines. Meanwhile, Super Heavy flew itself to a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

The soft splashdown marked a new achievement for Starship. During the third flight test, which took place in March, only a few of Super Heavy’s engines were able to light up again for a crucial landing burn. As a result, the booster hit the water with an uncontrolled splat.

Eventually, SpaceX plans to have the Super Heavy booster fly itself back to its base after doing its job.

The upper stage reached orbital-scale altitudes in excess of 200 kilometers (125 miles), but completing a full orbit wasn’t part of today’s plan. Instead, SpaceX aimed to have Ship make its own soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Streaming video, relayed via SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, showed the rocket’s protective skin glowing with the heat of atmospheric re-entry. Burning debris broke off from one of Ship’s control fins, damaging the camera’s lens — but the fuzzy view nevertheless confirmed that the spacecraft successfully hit the mark. That represented another advance over the third test, when the Ship broke up during its descent to the ocean.

“Despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!” SpaceX founder Elon Musk exulted in a posting to his X social-media platform.