SpaceX's Starship megarocket took to the skies for the 10th time ever today (Aug. 26), on a bold test flight that marked a big bounceback from recent failures.
Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas today at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT; 6:30 p.m. local Texas time). That was two days later than originally planned; an issue with ground systems at Starbase forced a scrub on Sunday (Aug. 24), and bad weather caused another one on Monday (Aug. 25).
But it was worth the wait: Starship did everything SpaceX asked it to today, getting the giant vehicle back on track after a string of issues.
"That was absolutely incredible," SpaceX Build Reliability Engineer Amanda Lee said during live launch commentary. "A huge congrats to all the teams here."
"Great work by the SpaceX team!!!" SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X after the flight.
A rocky road recently
Today's flight was the 10th overall for Starship, which is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, and its fourth of 2025 so far. The year's three previous liftoffs didn't go entirely to plan.
The company lost the Ship vehicle, Starship's 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage, less than 10 minutes after liftoff on both Flight 7 and Flight 8, which launched in January and March, respectively. The Ship on Flight 9 in May made it considerably farther, but still fell short of its planned Indian Ocean splashdown: The spacecraft broke apart as it reentered Earth's atmosphere about 45 minutes after liftoff.
SpaceX suffered another Ship setback in June, when the vehicle it was prepping for Flight 10 exploded on a Starbase test stand. The upper stage was completely destroyed, forcing SpaceX to switch to another Ship.
Starship's giant first-stage booster, named Super Heavy, has performed better as of late. For example, the booster successfully returned to Starbase for a dramatic catch by the launch tower's "chopstick" arms on both Flight 7 and Flight 8.
SpaceX notched a major Super Heavy milestone on Flight 9 as well, reflying the booster for the first time. (The same vehicle launched on Flight 7). But there was also a hiccup on the May mission.
SpaceX conducted a number of experiments with Super Heavy on Flight 9, including bringing it back to Earth at a different angle, and so aimed for a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico rather than a somewhat risky return to Starbase. But Super Heavy didn't hit the water intact, exploding above the waves during the final stages of its descent.
Making adjustments
SpaceX studied the above issues in detail, then diagnosed them and cameup with fixes. For example, the company traced Ship's Flight 9 problems to a failure of the vehicle's main fuel tank pressurization system diffuser. Engineers redesigned the diffuser "to better direct pressurized gas into the main fuel tank and substantially decrease the strain on the diffuser structure," SpaceX wrote in a report about the Flight 9 anomaly.
Super Heavy's breakup on Flight 9 was likely caused by unexpectedly high forces on the booster's fuel transfer tube, which itself was the result of the higher "angle of attack" during descent, the company added. Future flights will reduce that angle to minimize the chance that the same problem will recur.
And the culprit of the June test-stand explosion was undetected damage to a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) in Ship's payload bay section, according to SpaceX. (COPVs in that area contain nitrogen gas that's used by Ship's environmental control system.)
"To address the issue, COPVs on upcoming flights will operate at a reduced pressure with additional inspections and proof tests added prior to loading reactive propellants onto a vehicle," the company wrote in the Flight 9 report, which also addressed the June explosion. "SpaceX has also updated its COPV acceptance criteria and developed a new non-destructive evaluation method to detect internal COPV damage."
An ambitious Flight 10
We promised maximum excitement. Starship delivered."
-- Dan Huot, SpaceX
The goals of Flight 10 were similar to those of Flight 9. Once again, SpaceX aimed to perform several experiments with Super Heavy, including a fuel-conserving controlled flip during descent and a landing burn that featured "unique engine configurations," according to company mission preview.
That all seemed to go according to plan today, as did Super Heavy's final move: It made a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after launch, just as SpaceX drew it up.
Ship came through today as well — and it had considerably more work to do. The upper stage separated from Super Heavy on time and achieved its desired suborbital trajectory. The, during a five-minute stretch that began about 20 minutes after launch, Ship deployed eight dummy versions of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites, a critical capability it tried but failed to demonstrate on all three of this year's previous Starship flights.
"Just a reminder, we're on a suborbital trajectory," SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said during live commentary. "These satellites on that exact same suborbital trajectory, they're going to burn up entirely."
And there will be many satellite deployments from Ship in the future, if all goes to plan: SpaceX is counting on Starship to finish building out its Starlink megaconstellation, which is already the biggest satellite network ever assembled. The giant rocket should carry at least 60 Starlinks at a time, Huot said.
Then, about 38 minutes into the flight, Ship briefly ignited one of its engines. This was another big milestone for SpaceX; such in-space re-lights will be needed on operational Starship flights, to help power the vehicles to their distant destinations and to guide them down to Earth for safe touchdowns and reuse.
"Looks like we confirmed the relight of one of those center raptor engines second time we've done that," Lee said during live commentary. "Super exciting. Huge congrats to the team on this milestone."
"That was a cool light show," Huot added.
About 45 minutes after liftoff, Ship began its reentry to Earth's atmosphere, a violent ordeal that SpaceX made even more harrowing to push the vehicle to its limits.
"A significant number of tiles have been removed from Starship to stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle during reentry," the company wrote in the Flight 10 mission preview. "Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, will test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry."
Reentry took a toll on Ship. About two minutes in, a chunk of Ship's skirt — the basal part near its engine bay — broke apart, sending debris floating into the final frontier.
"That's not what we want to see," Huot said."We've got some visible damage on the aft skirt. We're continue to re enter, though.
The Ship vehicle persevered, surviving in good enough shape to perform its planned landing burn and splashing down in the Indian Ocean as planned. 66.5 minutes after launch. And it was a bullseye landing: Ship came down within view of a buoy-mounted camera that SpaceX set up in the planned splashdown zone.
All in all, it was a successful day for SpaceX and the Starship team — one that the company celebrated and will doubtless plan to build on going forward.
"We probably gave it a little bit of extra time in the oven, but made it all the way through reentry ... we promised maximum excitement. Starship delivered," Huot said as he ticked off each of the Flight 10 milestones Starship nailed during the flight. "Time to go through the data. Really crazy cool to hit all those objectives today."
Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:28 p.m. EDT to include more comments from SpaceX's team on the Starship Flight 10 test flight.