• Liftoff successful: SpaceX’s Starship rocket, the most powerful rocket ever made, has launched from Starbase, Texas. The mission will seek to reach orbit for the first time during a 10-hour flight, deploying 26 operational Starlink satellites.
• What to expect: SpaceX will not attempt to land the Super Heavy rocket booster or return the upper Starship spacecraft to dry land. Both will aim for controlled splashdowns in the ocean.
• Coming up: SpaceX is facing intense pressure to get Starship ready for a crucial NASA test flight next year that could pave the way for the next moon landing.
Starship is currently in orbit, but SpaceX previously decided that it would reevaluate the flight plan every so often to ensure that things are safe and looking good. One of those checkpoints is coming up.
“We’ll get to that initial checkpoint at about one hour 28 minutes into the flight. That’s where the team can look at everything and decide: Do we need to come home early?” SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said.
SpaceX can direct Starship to relight an engine and begin its trip home prematurely if anything goes wrong. That’s all designed to make sure Starship remains safe and does not lose control in orbit.
If SpaceX were to lose control of the vehicle as it is lapping the planet, it could remain stuck in orbit, posing a risk to active satellites.
SpaceX’s Starship conducted its 14th flight test on Monday, an unprecedented test flight to reach orbit.
Some of the 26 Starlink V3 satellites that Starship will deploy today are doing double duty: Before they go on to beam internet service to some of SpaceX’s 12 million internet customers, a few of these devices will play a role in researching how today’s test flight is going.
The heat shield is a vital component. It’s designed to protect the upper Starship spacecraft as it navigates the violent physics of reentering Earth’s thick inner atmosphere while traveling at speeds that can top 17,000 miles per hour.
And Starship’s heat shield doesn’t just have to work once. It has to work over and over and over again if SpaceX is going to realize its dream of rapidly reusing these rockets.
It’s perhaps one of the most daunting engineering challenges in a long list of technical quandaries that Starship is facing.
SpaceX confirmed it’s already made contact with the first Starlink V3 satellites after they were ejected from Starship’s cargo bay.
These are the first of a new generation of Starlinks that are intended to boost the network’s performance:
The Starship spacecraft has begun deploying its batch of 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the very first of a new generation of capacity-boosting Starlinks as SpaceX continues to build out its high-speed global internet business.
The Starlinks are designed to lie flat, stacked atop each other as they ride inside Starship’s cargo bay. They leave the vehicle by exiting through a narrow slat, sort of like a high-tech Pez dispenser.
One of Starship’s six engines just briefly reignited, as expected, and has officially sent the vehicle on a path to enter Earth orbit.
It’s a massive milestone. From here on out, Starship is traveling fast enough and at such a precise trajectory, that it’s begun falling around the planet.
Today’s test flight is expected to see Starship complete six full laps of Earth over about 10 hours.
The upper Starship spacecraft — or “ship” — is still cruising on a suborbital trajectory as mission controllers evaluated whether it should fire up its engines once more to go to orbit.
And mission controllers just opted to go for it, paving the way for Starship to fire again and head to orbit.
SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot noted that one of the ship’s three engines that are designed to operate in the vacuum of space unexpectedly powered down during the vehicle’s first engine burn.
But the three other Starship engines, which are designed to operate within Earth’s atmosphere, are working well. And those are crucial for the all-important orbital insertion burn — and the deorbit burn that will get Starship safely back out of orbit.
The engine issue initially prompted Huot to say SpaceX would not attempt the orbital insertion burn, but flight controllers ultimately chose to move forward.
He noted that SpaceX does not need to fire the ship’s vacuum engines again during this mission.
SpaceX said from the beginning it would be running through extensive checks before committing to firing the Starship spacecraft’s engines up for a second time and heading to orbit. That burn is expected about 25 minutes into flight.
But SpaceX is still evaluating whether all systems are working well and that Starship is on a favorable path to keep this mission safe. SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot initially said SpaceX would NOT go to orbit — but that did not appear to be a final decision.
SpaceX just confirmed the Super Heavy rocket booster made its splashdown landing off the coast of Starbase.
It’s not clear how soft the landing was, as Super Heavy had some engine issues during a return burn. But employees could be heard cheering on the livestream.
It’s not a perfect showing for the Super Heavy booster today, despite SpaceX making changes to the engines to try to avoid ice clogging that’s inhibited the booster’s ability to relight some of its engines.
SpaceX’s Dan Huot confirmed only 31 out of 33 of Super Heavy’s engines relit during the boost-back burn, which is the first burn the vehicle completes after separating from Starship.
Those engine failures may prevent Super Heavy from making a controlled, soft landing in the Gulf. On the last mission in July, Super Heavy also made a “hard” landing because of engine issues.
Starship, meanwhile, is still soaring to space. All six of its engines lit up after separating from the Super Heavy booster. Starship will finish out this mission flying solo.
The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket booster just made it through a crucial moment in the mission: stage separation.
That’s when Super Heavy shuts down most of its engines in a moment called “main engine cutoff,” or MECO, as the rocket booster has now burned through most of its fuel.
Ascent appeared to go smoothly, but one of the booster 33 rocket engines appeared to shut down prematurely, according to the livestream.
Starship then ignited its own engines and thrust itself away from the Super Heavy booster in a maneuver SpaceX calls “hot staging.”
It’s quite different from how SpaceX’s Falcon rockets separate their upper and lower stages during flight. They use a gentler approach that involves pneumatic pushers that pry the two pieces apart.
Starship’s hot staging essentially uses the thrust of the upper spacecraft’s own engines to forcefully break free. It’s basically rocket separation by blunt force trauma.
The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster just soared through the first crucial milestone: Max Q.
That’s an aerospace term that refers to the point during flight at which a vehicle experiences peak stress — when it is traveling very fast while the atmosphere is still quite thick, putting the highest strain on the spacecraft.
The Super Heavy rocket booster just fired up its 33 rocket engines, giving the first burst of power off the launchpad.
The booster will fire for two minutes and 20 seconds, burning through most of its fuel, before it shuts its engines off and separates from the upper Starship spacecraft, which is often referred to as the “ship.”
Justin Styer, SpaceX’s senior director of Starship launch, used this analogy to describe liftoff in a recent promotional video.
One all-important (and unpredictable) factor in the world of rocketry is weather. SpaceX needs clear skies and docile winds along the flight path to make liftoff possible.
SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot just gave an update on today’s forecast, saying, “Weather is gorgeous,” noting there are some clouds, but they’re “not going to be an issue throughout the count.”
“This is the most complex range operation we’ve ever had to do with Starship,” Huot added, referring to the weather and safety analysis, called the “range.” “But things are looking good right now.”
We’re likely just about 30 minutes away from liftoff because SpaceX just began live coverage of today’s launch.
Today’s broadcast will look a bit different than Starship’s prior 13 test flights. Those missions all lasted about one hour as the spacecraft was kept on a suborbital trajectory.
But today’s test flight is heading for orbit — specifically to make six laps of Earth and deploy functional Starlink internet satellites. It’ll last a total of 10 hours, if successful.
“Coverage is planned to continue through splashdown, with the potential for hours of live views from Starship as it orbits Earth,” SpaceX previously said on its website.
SpaceX is planning to construct a massive, $100 billion spaceport in Louisiana, where the company wants to launch its gargantuan Starship rocket thousands of times per year.
Construction of the spaceport is expected to begin by the end of next year near the southern coast of Louisiana’s Vermilion Parish, with the first launch targeted as soon as 2029, according to an economic development website.
Such a development would mark a dramatic shift for SpaceX and the US rocket industry — making Louisiana, which has never before hosted an orbital launch, perhaps the busiest spaceport on the planet.
The new campus will be dubbed “Starbase, Louisiana” — borrowing the name of SpaceX’s recently incorporated company town in South Texas. Starbase, Texas, is the current home to Starship’s testing and development facilities and the spot from which all 13 test flights have launched with mixed success.
Today’s test flight will also take off from South Texas.
The Louisiana location, however, would host flights of the Starship rocket once it is operational, having proven it can safely haul cargo to orbit. SpaceX also plans to land and recover every piece of its Starship rockets — including the upper spacecraft, which has never been done before — in order to allow the rockets to be rapidly reused and drive down the cost of each launch.
Read more about the planned SpaceX launch site here.
In a post on X, SpaceX confirmed that the Super Heavy rocket booster and Starship spacecraft are now being filled up for flight.
Millions of pounds of propellant — including superchilled liquid methane (the fuel) and liquid oxygen, or LOX (the oxidizer) — will be loaded onto the vehicles in less than an hour.
While SpaceX has made headway testing how to reuse the Super Heavy rocket booster, it has yet to successfully guide the upper Starship spacecraft — or “ship” — back to dry land from space.
But the company was able to drag one ship out of the water following splashdown. That happened after one of the vehicles, called Ship 40, made a pristine touchdown in the Indian Ocean after Starship’s last test flight in July.
The soft landing allowed SpaceX, for the first time, to send recovery ships out to further inspect the vehicle and get hands-on with the hardware.
Why is that a big win?
SpaceX is still figuring out how to perfect the ship’s heat shield. It’s a vital component that must protect the vehicle by enduring grueling temperatures — topping 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit — as it plunges back into Earth’s atmosphere.
And Starship’s heat shield doesn’t just have to work once. It has to work repeatedly and perfectly with virtually no refurbishments if SpaceX is going to realize its goal of rapid reusability.
So Ship 40 was heavily harvested for intel. And the heat shield flying today bears several upgrades.
“They include additional retention mechanisms added to tiles in areas deemed to be at highest risk of falling off during ascent,” SpaceX said.
There will also be multiple areas of the ship outfitted “with a curved tile design that has shown the ability to reduce heating in the gaps between tiles.”
And in a major new test, SpaceX will even reuse a couple of heatshield tiles for the first time. Two of the hexagonal tiles on board Ship 41 today were recovered and transfered over from Ship 40.
Starship can take off anytime within a 75-minute launch window that opens at 8:15 a.m. ET (7:15 a.m. local).
And SpaceX just confirmed on social media that it’s targeting liftoff for roughly a half-hour into the window.
Today’s test flight is about putting Starship into orbit for the first time — marking a massive stride toward getting the vehicle out of the protoype phase and into operation.
But going up is only part of the story. For Starship to be truly successful and deliver on CEO Elon Musk’s promises, it also has to survive the trip back down.
SpaceX calls it “the holy grail of rocketry.”
While the company has long recovered the bottom booster of its Falcon 9 rockets, Starship is expected to be completely reusable from top to bottom — even the upper spacecraft. And the upper part of a two-stage rocket has never in history been recovered and reused.
On top of that? SpaceX wants it to be rapidly reusable — going from landing back on dry ground to launching again in quick succession. (That would set it apart from a vehicle like NASA’s Space Shuttle, which required weeks of refurbishment between flights.)
Musk has called achieving these goals “preposterously difficult.”
But there’s good reason to chase the dream: “If full and rapid reusability can be achieved, it reduces the cost of access to orbit by a factor of 100 or more,” he added.