What we're covering
• SpaceX has launched an unprecedented test flight of Starship — the most powerful launch vehicle ever constructed — from the company’s facilities in Starbase, Texas.
• Minutes after liftoff at 5:47 p.m. ET, SpaceX attempted to guide the Super Heavy rocket booster back to a pinpoint landing at its South Texas launch tower, called Mechazilla, but the maneuver was ultimately unsuccessful. The company redirected the booster to splash down in the Gulf.
• The Starship spacecraft reached orbit, where it deployed Starlink internet satellites and is expected to spend 22 hours circling Earth.
• At the end of the mission, SpaceX will aim to guide the Starship spacecraft back from orbit and to a controlled upright landing within the arms of the Mechazilla launch tower. Such a feat has never been attempted in the history of rocketry.
Updates
(45)How is Starship different from NASA's Space Shuttle?
In terms of reusable vehicles, perhaps the closest relatives to SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft are NASA’s Space Shuttle orbiters.
They clocked in at about 122-feet long, roughly comparable to Starship’s 171 feet.
There are crucial differences, however. NASA’s iconic white orbiters were strapped to separate, partially reusable rockets for takeoff. And, when they returned home, they landed on a runway, much like an airplane.
But the shuttles never became rapidly or easily reusable, as the space agency had once hoped.
Each shuttle launch cost about $1.5 billion on average — hundreds of millions of dollars more than what the space agency had anticipated at the program’s outset. A Starship prototype, in comparison, costs relatively little — $100 million by some estimates.
“But great things come from a beginning, and that beginning was the space shuttle,” said Joseph Gonzalez, an associate professor of practice in aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois.
One key improvement: Starship won’t land like an airplane. It’s instead designed to be captured in mid-air by SpaceX’s launch tower as it flies to a pinpoint landing.
That’s a big safety advantage, Gonzalez added, because on a shuttle, the landing gear had to be exposed to extreme temperatures as the spacecraft came barreling back into the atmosphere. “There’s a lot more risk behind it,” he said.
Landing gear also packs weight onto a vehicle, Gonzalez added. And in the world of rocketry, lighter is always better.
Is reusability necessary for SpaceX to land astronauts on the moon?
SpaceX has been working to make reusable rockets a mainstream concept for more than a decade, and it’s made significant headway — often landing and re-flying the first-stage boosters of its rockets and saving millions of dollars in the process.
Throughout that process, SpaceX has made clear that reusing rockets isn’t necessary, but it is nice to have because it can cut costs so drastically.
Starship may be shifting that narrative, however. Reusability may not be completely necessary — but it’s now baked into the company’s core mission objectives.
Take NASA’s Artemis IV moon landing, for example. If the agency chooses to use Starship to put its astronauts on the lunar surface, it would require SpaceX to launch multiple additional Starship spacecraft filled with nothing but fuel to top off the lunar lander’s propellant.
SpaceX may need to launch at least six — and perhaps double or triple that number — for a single moon landing.
If SpaceX can’t figure out how to make Starship reusable by the time NASA is ready for the moon landing, theoretically, SpaceX could simply build and launch as many Starships as they need to get enough propellant to orbit.
But that’s “not the plan,” a SpaceX spokesperson told reporters during a factory tour on Friday.
The more elegant solution, of course, is to use reusable refueling tankers that can make multiple flights to space and back to drop off fuel.
SpaceX is in the midst of an identity crisis
SpaceX has always had its eyes set on Mars. One of its long-term goals has been to create a self-sustaining community of humans living and working on Earth’s neighboring planet — a dream with numerous engineering challenges.
Reaching the red planet has continued to galvanize SpaceX’s workforce for decades, helping to propel the company to the top of private space exploration.
But SpaceX is no longer just a space company.
AI has quickly become one of its next frontiers. Before going public, for example, SpaceX acquired Musk’s xAI — recently renamed SpaceX Super Intelligence. The company is aims to build data centers in space to help accelerate the advancement of machine learning.
SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said this goal shift is not just figurative. SpaceX is actively diverting talent away from other areas: “The compute centers — we need a lot of help really quickly. We’ve got folks from launch helping. We’ve got folks from other areas helping — just like some SpaceX engineers helped on the AI front with the (Grok) models,” Shotwell said.
During a town hall in August, Musk spoke at length about AI, appearing to try to sell his employees on this evolving vision. “Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX. And the value of SpaceX will be some astronomical number,” he said.
Employees cheered in support.
But is manifesting a technology that experts have said could result in the end of humankind equally as exhilarating for top engineering talent as extraterrestrial exploration? Time will tell.
Starship is expected to be super cheap to launch. But will the broader industry benefit?
SpaceX’s Falcon rockets have dominated the global launch industry for years.
But now that the company is phasing out Falcons in favor of focusing on Starship, there’s no guarantee Starship will fill the void left behind.
Falcon customers have been able to use a website to inquire about booking an entire rocket or finding space for their satellite aboard a rideshare mission. No such offering exists for Starship, and it’s not clear that SpaceX will open the rocket up for commercial sales.
And even if SpaceX does, it may not be as cheap as advertised.
Though Musk has said Starship will drive down the cost of getting cargo to orbit by “orders of magnitude,” even if SpaceX achieves that goal, it’s not clear that SpaceX will allow other companies to reap the benefits by passing along those cost savings to customers.
“There’s zero economic reason for SpaceX to do that — and zero data that supports the trend is even going that direction,” according to a source familiar with customer negotiations, speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive industry developments. A reality check may be in store for some “companies that have raised a ton of money on the idea that launch costs are all of a sudden going to be $500 a kilogram.”
Notably, the cargo configuration of Starship also does not have a traditional payload bay that can deliver all manner of satellites into orbit.
Rather, it’s specifically designed to deploy SpaceX-made satellites through a narrow slat, reminiscent of a Pez dispenser. That could limit what type of commercial satellites are able to fly aboard.
SpaceX is phasing out two of its most iconic creations
As Starship flights ramp up, SpaceX has made clear that the company will phase out two of its most iconic creations: the Dragon spacecraft, which ferries astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station, and the Falcon 9 rocket, which for a decade has dominated the global launch market.
These vehicles not only revolutionized the space industry in their own way, they’re also still essential workhorses for ongoing activities in Earth orbit. There are no clear backup options in place. The potential disruptions from this loss are already causing panic among some satellite operators, said Caleb Henry, director of research at the analytics firm Quilty Space.
“For small satellite operators, which tend to be more entrepreneurial, this crisis has been percolating for about six months at least,” Henry said. “In order to raise money, startups need to show they have a viable path to orbit. They have to move quickly.”
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has for years offered a crucial delivery system for space satellites. Losing the rocket could slow down development of new technologies, such as direct-to-cellular connectivity — which promises to eliminate dead zones — and space-based data centers for AI computing, Henry said.
Read more about the looming launch bottleneck here.
SpaceX is facing a sweeping environmental review in Texas
Federal laws require projects like SpaceX’s Starship launch facilities to undergo environmental reviews to evalue the impact on air quality, water supplies, noise pollution and wildlife.
But SpaceX has not faced a thorough analysis of its Starbase, Texas facilities — called an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS — since 2014, when the company’s plans for the area were far more limited.
Back then, SpaceX wasn’t even planning to launch the most powerful launch vehicle ever created from this area. The company was instead looking to expand where its workhorse Falcon rockets could take flight.
As its plans evolved to include a spaceport for the gargantuan Starship vehicle, the Federal Aviation Administration allowed it to shift course without undergoing another EIS.
Much to the chagrin of local environmental groups, the FAA has repeatedly said that SpaceX’s evolving plans wouldn’t present a “significant” change to existing analysis. And SpaceX is currently allowed to launch Starship up to 25 times per year from Texas. Though, the most its logged so far was five in 2025.
That is about to change.
SpaceX wants permission to launch up to 456 times per year from South Texas. Those plans have spurred the FAA to take another look at the environmental impact, the agency announced on October 14.
Public hearings on the matter are scheduled for mid-November.
SpaceX invited media to a factory tour on Friday
SpaceX on Friday did something it has not done in many years: opened its doors to journalists.
While the company has a communications team, they do not typically respond to reporters’ inquiries or — outside of rare circumstances — allow interviews outside of NASA-led news conferences.
But space reporters from a variety of outlets got a 45-minute tour of SpaceX’s Starfactory here in Starbase, Texas, on Friday. And several spokespeople and engineers were available to answer questions.
One thing SpaceX made clear: The company wants this to be a mass manufacturing facility churning out two fully completed Starships and Super Heavy boosters every week.
NASA's administrator doesn't want Democrats to "handicap" SpaceX
NASA chief Jared Isaacman went on Fox News on Thursday to discuss looming threats that the wave of newly elected Democrats will use their new power to investigate Musk.
When asked if he feared “politics” would interfere with NASA’s goal of getting astronauts back to the moon amid a space race with China, Isaacman said he’s spent subtantial time trying to build relationships in both political parties.
To win the space race, “it takes the contributions of the best from across the nation, the best from industry. SpaceX plays an absolute part in that.”
And though he did not specify how Democrats’ investigations may impact SpaceX, he made clear that he’s concerned that slowing down SpaceX’s progress will undermine NASA.
Isaacman, who became a billionaire after founding a tech company at the age of 16, notably had his nomination briefly rescinded by President Trump last year, allegedly over Isaacman’s prior donations to Democrats. Since then, Isaacman has donated extensively to Republicans — including a recent $3 million contribution to Trump’s super PAC.
Isaacman also has close ties to Elon Musk. On two occasions, before becoming NASA administrator, he commissioned flights to space aboard SpaceX Dragon capsules.
Jared Isaacman founded a tech company at 16 and bankrolled two private SpaceX missions before a turbulent path to NASA’s top job.
Just how hard is it to create a fully, rapidly reusable rocket?
For Starship to be truly successful and deliver on CEO Elon Musk’s promises, both pieces of the vehicle — the Super Heavy rocket booster and the upper Starship spacecraft — will have to routinely survive trips back home so they can be flown again.
SpaceX calls it “the holy grail of rocketry.”
On top of that? SpaceX wants it to be rapidly reusable — going from landing back on dry ground to blasting off 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.
In a November statement, SpaceX also laid out the company’s vision for a fully reusable Starship that “will enable future missions to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, expand the worldwide Starlink network, launch our Starmind supercompute constellation, extend the light of consciousness to the stars, and make life multiplanetary.”
SpaceX wasn’t able to attempt a recovery of the Super Heavy rocket booster on Friday. But there’s still hope it can make history by returning the Starship spacecraft to a landing at its Mechazilla launch tower in South Texas on Saturday afternoon.
Deployed Starlink satellites captured images of spaceship's heat shield
One goal for Starship was to send 26 Starlink satellites into orbit, and it did so without a hitch earlier in the mission.
But a few of those Starlink satellites had an extra mission beyond just beaming internet connectivity to SpaceX customers on the ground: Three of the satellites were equipped with cameras.
They were designed to peer back at Starship as they slid out of the cargo bay and capture images of the heat shield — a vital component. The shield is a layer of hexagonal, ceramic tiles that will protect the upper Starship spacecraft as it experiences the immense stress of reentering Earth’s thick inner atmosphere at speeds that may top 17,600 miles per hour (28,324 kilometers per hour).
SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said engineers spent a few hours examining that satellite imagery. “Our heat shield team reviewed all the data we got from our ground tracking cameras and from those satellite cameras and confirmed the heat shield is in a good posture for a reentry and return to launch site.”
That’s a positive sign that Starship is still on track to attempt to land back in Starbase, Texas Saturday afternoon.
This is Starship's longest test flight by far
SpaceX launched the first full-scale Starship rocket in April 2023, and the vast majority of the 14 test flights that have occurred since have lasted about an hour or less and stuck to a low-slung, suborbital trajectory.
Only the last test mission, Flight 14, in September — the first Starship mission to reach Earth orbit — stretched longer, clocking in at a little over three hours.
Though SpaceX had originally hoped Flight 14 would span more than nine hours, it opted to cut the journey short in part because of an unexpected engine outage that cropped up early into the flight.
So, already, Starship is currently in its longest trip to space ever. Spending more time in orbit is ideal because it allows SpaceX to gather new data about how the vehicle performs in the vacuum of space, including microgravity and extreme temperature swings.
If all goes to plan, this trip will span a whopping 22 hours and 33 minutes.
SpaceX's Starship spacecraft is a different beast
Typically, vehicles designed to safely return home from space are designed as small, gumdrop-shaped capsules, such as SpaceX’s Dragon vehicles or the Apollo command modules. Those spacecraft ride to orbit atop a rocket.
But Starship is both a spacecraft and a rocket, and it’s far larger than other vehicles built to survive plummeting back through Earth’s atmosphere from space — a trip that can drum up blistering temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,090 degrees Celsius).
For context, the Starship spacecraft is so massive that more than 100 Apollo command modules could fit inside its completely hollowed-out interior, by volume.
Starship just passed its next checkpoint milestone
SpaceX’s team confirmed Starship will pass its second of three “checkpoints” of its coasting phase.
“We are one step closer to an eventual return to launch site,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said during the broadcast.
These milestones mark a point at which mission controllers can opt to bring the Starship spacecraft home early — in a safe way — if any issues with the vehicle are detected.
Starship soared through the first of these milestones about an hour and a half after takeoff.
Now, it’s made it through the second. Flight controllers determined Starship is still in great working order and able to proceed with the mission as planned — but if there had been issues, SpaceX had the option to deorbit the vehicle and leave it to splash down off the coast of Chile.
“These precleared areas, which were also used during Flight 14, provide a safe place to land Starship if any conditions arise that may preclude the ability to perform a safe reentry,” SpaceX said.
“Precleared” indicates that air traffic is preemptively banned from the area just in case Starship needs to pass through on its way to a splashdown landing.
That caused some confusion during the first checkpoint on Friday afternoon, as the Hawaii Department of Transportation posted on Facebook that air traffic had been grounded because of SpaceX “debris.”
Air traffic at the time was grounded anyway because of a nationwide ground stop issued by the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday. But a spokesperson for Hawaii DOT, reached by phone on Friday afternoon, told CNN that the Facebook post was meant to pass along that there was a NOTAM — or a routine Notice to Airmen — in place for the area.
CNN has not found any reports of debris related to the Starship spacecraft, and at the time, SpaceX was showing live views of the vehicle flying through orbit fully intact.
This is what SpaceX is looking for when it conducts a health check
All eyes are on Starship as SpaceX considers whether to allow the vehicle to continue on its flight path — aiming to make an unprecedented landing back at its launch tower tomorrow — or whether the company will be forced to bring the vehicle home early.
On each of the three health checks SpaceX had planned for Starship’s journey in orbit, it will be carefully analyzing a suite of data: “They include Raptor engine health, loss of power or communications, the health of the flight computers and navigation sensors, the structural integrity of the propellant tanks and feedlines, the ability to hold tank pressure, and Starship’s ability to control its attitude,” SpaceX said in a post on its website.
Here's why a Starship engine failed on the last mission
The Starship spacecraft made it all the way to orbit insertion today without any major issues.
It was a stark departure from Flight 14 in September. SpaceX pushed forward with that mission, giving the green light for the vehicle to reach orbit even with one rocket engine on the spacecraft malfunctioning.
Starship didn’t need that engine for any future burns — but it was a surprising decision given how conservative the company’s criteria had been.
CEO Elon Musk said at an October conference that the engine outage was caused by a “failure in the engine computer software.”
We asked a former SpaceX employee about that moment.
“Sometimes in that software, the tolerances can be like a little too tight,” said Austin Spiegel, a former lead software engineer at SpaceX and now co-founder and CEO of the software startup Sift.
That’s why previous flight data is so important, he emphasized. Flight controllers “can reference that test data to understand the performance characteristics of the engine, so that when it comes time to launch the vehicle, they actually have a much deeper understanding of how the engine is going to perform.”
That can give engineers the confidence to proceed — even in less-than-ideal scenarios, Spiegel said.
The only engine issue during Flight 15 that SpaceX divulged on the broadcast Friday was related to the Super Heavy rocket booster, which saw one of its 33 engines flame out prematurely. It’s not clear if additional issues cropped up when SpaceX decided to dispose of the booster in the ocean rather than attempt to recover the vehicle by steering it back to the launch tower on dry land.
SpaceX's last test flight almost didn't reach orbit. Here's what happened
During SpaceX’s last Starship test flight in September, the company sought to fly Starship on an orbital — rather than a “passively safe” suborbital trajectory — for the first time.
It was a nail-biter.
SpaceX had made clear that it needed to ensure the Starship spacecraft, or ship, was working as intended before allowing the vehicle to relight its engines and head for orbit. But minutes into flight, one of the ship’s engines shut down prematurely and was deemed out of service.
Initially, mission controllers — and even the broadcaster on SpaceX’s own livestream — said the company would forgo the second engine burn, opting not to risk sending the vehicle to orbit.
But Musk prompted mission controllers to reconsider, according to a SpaceX- produced video released November 6.
“The moment we lost the engine, we all kind of knew this was the end of the mission for the ship. We had thought, ‘Hey, let’s not proceed if anything goes wrong,” said Jeremy Pedro, SpaceX’s director of Starship propulsion systems.
But Musk pushed back.
In a statement, the FAA said SpaceX’s decisions were “within approved flight criteria.”
“FAA monitored all activities associated with the conduct of the licensed launch and reentry,” the agency said.
See how Starship stacks up to the largest rockets ever
Starship is the biggest rocket ever created — by far.
The towering megarocket stands at nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall and, with the debut of Version 3, packs around 18 million pounds of force at liftoff.
Here’s how it stacks up to some of the largest rockets ever constructed, past and present.
- Saturn V: The famous NASA rocket that powered the Apollo moon landings of the 20th century put out about 7.6 million pounds of thrust at takeoff. That’s still less than half of Starship’s expected power. It stood at about 360 feet (110 meters) tall.
- Russian N1 rocket: This was Russia’s mega moon rocket of the 20th century space race. And while it was never operational (all four launch attempts failed), Musk has said it’s the closest relative of Starship’s design. The N1 was expected to give off more than 10 million pounds of thrust at liftoff — still well below Starship’s specs.
- The Space Shuttle: NASA’s workhorse launch system in the post-Apollo era, the shuttle had two solid rocket boosters that gave off about 5.3 million pounds of force at liftoff. It was about 180 feet (55 meters) tall.
- Falcon Heavy: SpaceX’s own 230-foot-tall (70-meter-tall) rocket that previously held the title for most powerful operational rocket in the world. It has about 5 million pounds of thrust.
- Space Launch System: NASA’s new moon rocket, which powered the historic Artemis II lunar flyby mission in April, is currently the most powerful rocket in operation. It produces about 8.8 million pounds of thrust — less than half the Starship V3’s output at liftoff. SLS’s Block 1 variant is about 322 feet (98.15 meters) tall.
Committing to orbit was a make-or-break milestone
One of the most consequential milestones of this mission happened when SpaceX decided whether to give Starship the green light to burn its engines for a second time — propelling it fast enough to enter orbit around Earth.
SpaceX did just that about 25 minutes after liftoff on Friday.
Getting through that step — and watching over Starship now as it flies through orbit — means grappling with numerous, often incalculable risks.
Any time SpaceX sends a Starship spacecraft to orbit, mission teams must take extreme care to ensure the vehicle can also make a controlled return to Earth. Otherwise, the ship could make an unpredictable plunge back home that could threaten people or property.
Reaching orbit is still a novel milestone for Starship. It attempted to do so for the first time on the last test flight in September — and was able to under less-than-ideal conditions.
Before that, SpaceX had only flown Starship on “passively safe” suborbital test flights. That meant that “even if control over the spacecraft was completely lost, it was already on a path to reenter the atmosphere and splash down in a pre-determined location,” the company said.
Once going orbital, however, that “pre-determined location” aspect is lost.
If SpaceX were to lose contact and control of Starship once it’s traveling more than 20 times the speed of sound through orbit, the vehicle would be subject to the whims of atmospheric drag.
That means that predicting when and how the vehicle returns to Earth is far more difficult and dangerous — potentially putting Starship on a collision course with people or property.
That’s why SpaceX has set up several check-ins with options to intentionally bring Starship home early if any signs of issues arise — but the company hasn’t needed to do that yet.
Starship deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites. Is it just the cherry on top?
Usually, when a rocket is flying with a valuable payload to space, companies like SpaceX make clear that recovering rocket parts is only icing on the cake.
Throughout the vast majority of rocketry history, nothing has been reusable.
SpaceX has long sought to change that. It first began spearheading reusability with its Falcon rockets.
But the company has also said that Falcon’s reusability isn’t necessary — just nice to have because it saves a lot of money. If SpaceX failed to recover a Falcon booster, but the rocket safely delivered a payload to orbit, the mission was still deemed fully successful.
With Starship, however, that ethos almost feels inverted.
This vehicle was designed to be fully reusable — from top to bottom — and the economics of Starship depend on SpaceX figuring out how to make that a reality.
So during these test flights, gathering data that can help SpaceX learn to consistently recapture and refly both the Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft has been the name of the game. Making headway toward full reusability is the primary goal.
“Reaching this milestone with Starship will allow SpaceX to unlock the true capability of Starship,” the company said in a statement.
Delivering a batch of SpaceX’s own Starlink satellites to orbit? Today, that’s practically just the cherry on top.
But it’s a fairly big cherry: During the last Starship test flight in September, the vehicle “deployed 26 terabits per second of Starlink bandwidth,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said during an earnings call. “So a single Starship launch, which wasn’t even fully loaded — it was about maybe half loaded — it did the equivalent of 10 Falcon 9 launches.”
NASA chief congratulates SpaceX on "spectacular" takeoff
This mission is far from over. But NASA chief Jared Isaacman took to social media to lend a congratulations to SpaceX for the flight so far.
It’s still not clear why exactly SpaceX opted not to attempt to land the booster back at the launch tower. And NASA will certainly be keeping a close eye on how the Starship spacecraft performs as it continues on this 22-hour test flight because the agency needs this spaceship to be ready for a crucial moon landing test next year, called Artemis III.
But Isaacman did specifically call out one highlight of the mission so far: Successfully deploying Starlink internet satellites.
NASA also intends to test internet connectivity during the Artemis III mission next year.
