SpaceX launched its first Starship since an accident this summer that caused one of the rockets to explode on a test stand at the company's headquarters in southern Texas.
But the rocket made an immense comeback on Tuesday, successfully reaching space and coasting halfway around the world before dropping softly into the Indian Ocean as planned.
The test was SpaceX's 10th Starship launch, following a recent succession of failures and mishaps for the gargantuan prototype.
Starship, a 400-foot-tall, super-heavy-lift rocket and spaceship, blasted off from SpaceX's private space port in Starbase, Texas, which is now an official city, at 6:30 p.m. CT. The event was broadcast on both SpaceX's website and X, the social platform acquired by the business' billionaire founder Elon Musk. It came two days after SpaceX's initial launch attempt, when controllers discovered a liquid oxygen fuel leak in the ground systems, Musk said on X. The company scrubbed another try on Monday due to weather risks.
By all appearances, Starship aced its one-hour test, suffering only minor damage to a flap and the aft skirt during the inferno of reentering Earth's atmosphere.
"We're kind of being mean to this Starship a little bit," said Dan Huot, a SpaceX spokesperson and launch commentator. "We're really trying to put it through the paces and kind of poke on what some of its weak points are."
The primary goals this time around for SpaceX were to test new landing maneuvers for the booster in the Gulf of Mexico, including experiments with different engine configurations to study how backups perform during landing burns. The ship also released eight dummy Starlink satellites that were stacked and deployed like a Pez dispenser within the ship. It was the first time a Starship ever simulated a payload delivery in space.
"Open the pod bay doors, HAL," Huot said as the payload demonstration began, referencing a famous line from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In addition to that exercise, the ship successfully relit an engine while coasting through space.
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SpaceX has faced public scrutiny for its previous Starship test failures. Its leadership insists that the company's rapid break-it-fix-it strategy is all part of the company's unique iterative philosophy — in stark contrast with NASA's much slower and careful approach.
The accident on June 18 happened during a ground test as a Starship was being fueled. A high-pressure nitrogen tank with undetected damage had burst, according to a company statement, causing the rocket to break apart and catch fire. No one was hurt in the incident, and SpaceX has since changed inspection and safety procedures.
That explosion followed a string of inflight failures that were setbacks from earlier progress. During the last launch on May 27, the booster got the upper stage into space, but it didn't survive its fall back toward Earth. Engineers say they flew the booster at a steeper angle than usual to test its limits, which put too much stress on part of the fuel system and caused it to break apart.
Meanwhile, the ship kept flying but developed a fuel leak inside the nose cone. This caused pressure problems that prevented it from releasing mock satellites and completing an engine restart in space. The ship eventually lost control and burned up over the ocean. Engineers traced the problem to a faulty part in the fuel system. The previous two tests — flights 7 and 8 — failed even earlier during the ascent stage.
But Tuesday's success signals the Starship program is back on track.
"We probably gave it a little bit of extra time in the oven but made it all the way through re-entry," Huot said. "Promised maximum excitement. Starship delivered."
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NASA will rely on SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the moon under a $4.2 billion contract. The plan is for a modified Starship to get the Artemis III and IV crews from the orbiting Orion spacecraft to the lunar surface. But before that can happen, SpaceX has to master refueling its spaceship in space.
Starship is also a passion project for Musk, who wants to eventually send humans to Mars and build a self-sustaining city on the Red Planet.
"Life cannot just be about solving one tragic problem after another. There must be also reasons to get up in the morning and be excited about the future," Musk said on Monday. "A future where we are a spacefaring civilization is infinitely more exciting than one where we are not."
