SpaceX Launches Starship on Successful Test Flight

SpaceX launched its massive Starship rocket on Thursday evening and completed its second successful test flight in a row. The rocket lifted off just after 6:50 p.m. Eastern time from SpaceX's Starbase launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. The flight lasted about one hour and five minutes, ending with Starship splashing down in the Indian Ocean near Australia. The test showed real progress for a rocket that has had many problems in the past.

Things did not go perfectly, though. The Super Heavy booster — the powerful lower section of the rocket — separated from Starship about two and a half minutes after launch and headed back toward Earth. SpaceX hoped the booster would land softly in the Gulf of Mexico, but its landing engines failed to fire correctly. The booster crashed into the water in a giant explosion instead.

Once Starship reached space, it had several things to prove. It carried 20 Starlink satellites into orbit, and some of those satellites had cameras attached, giving people on the ground a live view of the rocket flying through space. The satellites were the same kind SpaceX plans to use for its internet service, which beams high-speed internet from orbit to people all over the world. For this test, however, the satellites only tried to connect with SpaceX's network before falling back into Earth's atmosphere and burning up.

Starship also showed off a new trick during this flight. It successfully restarted one of its six Raptor engines while in space, something it did not manage to do during its last test flight in May. That earlier engine had shut down too early during launch, so the team was not able to try it. Getting engines to restart in space is an important skill for a rocket that SpaceX wants to use for big missions.

SpaceX has huge plans for Starship. The company wants it to replace the smaller Falcon 9 rocket and become its main workhorse. Starship can carry up to 100 tons of cargo to orbit, which means it can launch many more Starlink satellites at once than the Falcon 9 can. That would help SpaceX build its internet network much faster and take on bigger missions.

The stakes go beyond SpaceX's own business plans. NASA is counting on a special moon-landing version of Starship to carry astronauts to the surface of the moon as part of its Artemis program. If everything goes according to plan, humans could walk on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years as soon as 2028. However, a government watchdog report from March found that SpaceX is behind schedule on building that lunar lander.

Time is running short for both SpaceX and the competing company Blue Origin. NASA's Artemis III mission, which will test key parts of the moon plan in low Earth orbit, is set to launch before the end of next year. The current plan calls for NASA's Orion crew capsule to meet up and dock with Starship in orbit. But SpaceX still needs to prove that Starship can reach orbit reliably, which means many more test flights are ahead.