Here's the latest
• Liftoff successful: SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever made, launched from Starbase, Texas, this morning, and the ship portion of the launch system reached orbit. All 26 operational Starlink satellites were deployed.
• Dramatic splashdown: The spacecraft survived its scorching journey back through Earth’s atmosphere before practicing a controlled landing burn in the Pacific Ocean. The splashdown wasn’t as soft as the one seen in July during the previous flight, causing a massive fireball over the water.
• Looking ahead: NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman congratulated SpaceX on its success so far following the launch. 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.
NASA chief acknowledges SpaceX is retiring Falcon to focus on Starship
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman on Monday helmed a news conference to discuss the future of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft — a particularly beleaguered vehicle.
You may remember Starliner as the vehicle that launched astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on a botched test mission to the Internatinoal Space Station in 2024. The spacecraft’s poor performance turned what was supposed to be a week-long mission into a nine-month ordeal that attracted international attention.
Ultimately, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule had to step in to bring Williams and Wilmore back home.
But here’s the thing: Now that SpaceX is getting its Starship vehicle up and running, it wants to retire its Falcon rockets and Dragon capsules. That could leave Boeing’s troubled Starliner as the only option for getting astronauts to low-Earth orbit. (Starship is designed for missions much deeper into space.)
Isaacman acknowledged that Starship presents other opportunities, “from carrying brand new telescopes for science and discovery to national security applications to the orbital economy.”
But getting astronauts to the ISS is still a priority. And Isaacman and other NASA officials on Monday laid out a new road map for getting Starliner fixed and working as intended.
The agency said Starliner could make an uncrewed test flight in December, followed by another flight with astronauts as soon as mid-2028.
Why Starship's cruise was cut short
In a statement on Flight 14 posted to the company’s website, SpaceX confirmed why flight controllers opted to bring the ship home sooner than expected.
As Starship ascended on its climb to space, one of the spacecraft’s Raptor vacuum engines shut down prematurely.
Starship was still able to reach orbit for the first time, burning the five other Raptor engines for longer to achieve enough thrust for its trajectory.
But as the spacecraft entered its cruise, called the coast phase, around Earth, Starship’s flight control team made a decision regarding the rest of the original 10-hour flight plan, paring it back to about three hours.
Catch up on today's wins and losses
Today’s mission notched some big wins — and a few moments of concern.
SpaceX is still, for example, having issues with engine reliability. The Super Heavy rocket booster performed well on the way up, but appeared to have one engine cut out early. It then only relit 31 of 33 engines as it guided itself back to Earth. Relighting engines is key for Super Heavy to guide itself back to a safe landing.
Meanwhile, the upper Starship spacecraft, or “ship,” had one of its six engines shut down prematurely on the way up to space. SpaceX didn’t need to use that engine again after the first burn, so the company opted to move ahead with the mission — giving Starship the green light to fire itself to orbit.
Then came the biggest wins of the day: Starship made it to orbit and safely deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, marking the first time the rocket has deployed an operational payload.
With the number of Starlink V3 satellites on board and the boosted capacity of this new version of the satellites, SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot noted that today’s test flight “was like 20 Falcon 9 flights in terms of bandwidth.”
Still, SpaceX chose to end the mission early, leaving Starship in orbit for just a few hours rather than the planned 10 hours.
Starship then headed for its most intense reentry yet. It plunged back into Earth’s atmosphere while traveling more than 20 times the speed of sound. Starship made it back and completed a controlled landing at a pre-planned site in the Pacific Ocean, though the ship did not make as soft a touchdown as it did on the last mission. After Flight 13 in July, Starship landed so softly that SpaceX is working to bring the vehicle all the way back to Texas after hauling it onto a ship.
It’s not clear whether SpaceX can attempt to make a similar recovery after today’s mission. But every piece of data the company can gather from recovered hardware could be extremely valuable.
Exactly when Starship will launch again — and how the next test mission will look — is not yet clear.
Musk had said he hoped to start landing both Super Heavy and the upper Ship back on dry land in the near future, paving the way for SpaceX to begin reusing both parts of the rocket — something that has never been done before. But it’s unclear whether the engine issues seen today will push off those goals further into the future.
SpaceX wants to make two of its own vehicles "obsolete"
Despite outstanding questions and engineering challenges left to solve, SpaceX already appears to be diverting resources to Starship as it begins to quietly phase out its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft.
SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said during a conference appearance earlier this month that Starship is simply “better” for achieving the company’s own long-term goals, so it makes sense to shift resources toward its development.
It’s also about ensuring SpaceX stays on the bleeding edge of rocket development, she added: “If we don’t obsolete our own products and services, someone’s going to find a way to obsolete them for us.”
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 statellite 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. There may be a reality check 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.
This is why SpaceX is building a 110 million square foot factory in Texas
Since beginning its foray as a publicly traded company, SpaceX has been propping up a wild plan to deploy about a million satellites into low-Earth orbit for a space-based data center — mostly to support AI.
But not all the infrastructure would be in space. The company also has plans to build a truly colossal chip factory in Texas, called Terafab, that’s expected to cost tens of billions of dollars.
The facility — slated to be 110,000,000 square feet — will be where Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, which SpaceX acquired ahead of the IPO, manufacture chips for computing, aiding both SpaceX and Tesla.
During his appearance at the All-In Summit last week, Musk said this massive undertaking was spurred by geopolitical concerns.
“We’re a little worried that, at some point, chips from Taiwan would not be available for who knows what reason,” Musk said.
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produces more than 90% of chips used for advanced computing.
SpaceX thanks Mexican government
Last summer, SpaceX president Claudia Sheinbaum threatened legal action against SpaceX, citing contamination caused by the company’s rockets. The remarks notably came after a Starship rocket exploded during ground tests at SpaceX’s facilities in Starbase, Texas — which lie on the Texas-Mexico border.
But the tense relationship appears to be easing. Sheinbaum later told Mexican news outlets that the government would not sue SpaceX after all.
“So far, things have worked reasonably well; if a lawsuit were to become necessary, we would evaluate it, but for now, we have opted for coordination,” Sheinbaum said last July according to local media.
Notably, during the close of Monday’s Starship webcast, one of the hosts named the Mexican government as one of the institutions the company wanted to thank:
It’s not clear why the Mexican government was named.
Starship splashes down in the Pacific Ocean
The Starship rocket just blared back into the atmosphere, glowing bright with plasma as the vehicle shed most of its speed as the energy was converted to heat.
The rocket came in like a belly-flopping skydiver, but it then reignited its engines to flip itself upright and make a controlled landing burn, practicing how the vehicle would guide itself back into the arms of its launch tower on dry land.
SpaceX hopes to soon land and refly Starship spacecraft, a feat that engineers have dubbed the “holy grail” of rocketry. But for today, the vehicle made a practice maneuver over the ocean.
The ship caused a massive ball of fire, and did not land as softly as it had during the last mission in July. But it appeared to remain at least partially intact atop the water.
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.
Starship glows pinkish-purple with plasma as reentry begins
The Starship spacecraft is now plunging back into the thick inner part of Earth’s atmosphere while still traveling thousands of miles per hour.
The process of reentry involves violent physics: Starship’s sheer speed means that, when it hits air particles, they begin to rip apart at the molecular level, creating a mesmerizing — but extremely hot — coating of plasma to build up on the vehicle’s exterior. Temperatures can reach more than 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Starship is outfitted with about 20,000 hexagonal tiles, forming a heat shield, to prevent the vehicle from melting, but reentry is still a precarious process. And the angle of attack matters a lot:
SpaceX is facing an identity crisis as goals shift toward AI
SpaceX’s long-term goal has always been to establish a self-sustaining community of humans living and working on Mars. That dream faces numerous — possibly intractable — engineering challenges.
But it has nonetheless galvanized SpaceX’s workforce for decades, helping to propel SpaceX to the undisputed leader in private space exploration.
But SpaceX is no longer just a space company.
Increasingly — and rapidly — it’s focusing more on AI. Before going public, for example, SpaceX acquired Musk’s xAI. And one of the company’s next big projects is building data centers in space to help spur the advancement of machine learning.
SpaceX 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.”
During a town hall in August, Musk spoke at length about AI, appearing to attempt 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.”
Employees cheered that declaration.
But is manifesting a technology that could result in the end of humankind equally as exhilarating for top engineering talent as extraterrestrial exploration? Time will tell.
SpaceX's new milestone coincides with a special anniversary
By reaching orbit on September 28, Starship also provided an unexpected throwback to Falcon 1, which reached orbit exactly 18 years ago, on September 28, 2008.
Falcon 1 was a smaller two-stage rocket operated by SpaceX between 2006 and 2009. In 2008, it became the first privately built, liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit, after three failed attempts.
The most dangerous stretch of the mission still lies ahead
It’s been a mixed bag of wins and losses for Starship today.
The Super Heavy booster didn’t relight all its engines as planned — though its practice landing over the Gulf “looked like a pretty soft splashdown,” said SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot. Still, SpaceX made adjustments to the vehicle’s engines to try to stave off such problems, so engineers will likely need to pursue further tweaks.
Meanwhile, the upper Starship spacecraft — or “ship” — has experienced engine issues of its own. The ship is what carries out the bulk of the mission after being lofted toward space by the Super Heavy, and today, the ship experienced an outage of one of its six engines.
That prompted SpaceX to consider abandoning plans to fire the spacecraft toward orbit at all. But, ultimately, the company decided it was still on a safe enough path that Starship could go for it.
The vehicle then relit one of its engines and made it safely to an orbital trajectory, and successfully deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites.
That’s a massive win: It’s the first time Starship has ever deployed operational satellites.
But the toughest part of the mission is still ahead. SpaceX opted to cut this test flight short, bringing Starship home after about three hours rather than 10.
And reentry is among the most dangerous stretches of any mission to orbit. The vehicle must dive back into Earth’s thick atmosphere while traveling more than 20 times the speed of sound. That creates some violent physics, and it’s expected to be even more intense as Starship is flying faster than ever before.
SpaceX is battling a lawsuit alleging Starship flights cause property damage
Some residents near SpaceX’s Starbase launch facilities at Texas’ southernmost tip have long expressed worries about disruptive sonic booms — which can be as loud as gunshots and may cause minor damage to buildings.
Now, more than 70 Texas locals are taking those concerns to court.
In an April 30 lawsuit, the residents alleged their homes had sustained unspecified damages from the acoustic vibrations associated with Starship launches.
SpaceX then argued back in court, as Law360 previously reported, saying that any property damage — if it’s proven — was not done intentionally: “Any suggestion that SpaceX launched its rockets with some sort of ill-will, animus, or specific desire to harm Plaintiffs personally is both completely absent from the Complaint and facially absurd,” SpaceX said in a July court filing. “This Court should dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims for property-based noneconomic damages as unrecoverable under Texas law.”
It is possible for the sonic booms created by Starship rockets to break windows — particularly old, damaged or single-pane ones, according to earlier research conducted by Brigham Young University students and staff.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit.
But Musk has previously downplayed sonic booms, saying in a 2022 post on X, “Starbase is an area that experiences storms and hurricanes that are far more serious than Starship launches.”
Elon Musk is widely disliked. He still bills SpaceX as saving humanity
Elon Musk is never short on controversy.
Polls consistently show he is disliked by more than half the population.
But he still frames SpaceX’s long term goal as nothing less than rescuing humanity from inevitable extinction.
“Being a spacefaring civilization, I think, is the most interesting thing we could possibly do for the future,” Musk told employees during an August 11 town hall, echoing his long history of saying SpaceX must colonize Mars to “preserve the light of consciousness” in case Earth’s population is wiped out by any number of disasters.
Still, Musk’s — and SpaceX’s vision — is evolving.
“Not probably — definitely — our AI revenue will exceed all other SpaceX revenue, probably in September” 2026, Musk said.
This shift does rub some longtime fans the wrong way. One ex-engineer described it as a threat to goals like Mars, saying SpaceX is “defocusing” on the dreams it was founded on.
As SpaceX deploys more Starlinks, the military's Starshield is taking shape
You may have noticed that not all rocket-related headlines have been about the “peaceful uses of outer space” lately.
The United States recently revealed that it has deployed weapons into space for the first time, without saying what type of weapons or what they were intended to accomplish.
It’s only the latest in a long list of signs that space is rapidly becoming more militarized.
SpaceX has always played a massive role in supporting the United States’ strategic interests in orbit. The company famously once sued the US Air Force for the right to bid on rocket contracts (and won). The company now dominates the national security launch market.
And SpaceX’s space-based internet infrastructure has a national security bent of its own.
Starship’s task today was to deploy Starlink internet satellites that will help serve some of the company’s 12 million customers across 160 countries. But SpaceX is also using its space-based communications infrastructure to create a secure, military-grade network called Starshield for more than $6 billion.
Musk mentioned the secretive project during an August town hall, saying, “We can’t say too much about Starshield for obvious reasons — because it’s you know top secret and stuff — but the Starshield team has done amazing work, and it is now a vital part of America’s national security.”
The Department of War also recently announced it’s giving its workers access to Starshield AI’s Grok. (Grok, the AI model developed by xAI, is now part of SpaceX after a pre-IPO merger in February.)
NASA's administrator recently donated $3 million to a Trump super PAC
Recent regulatory filings show that NASA administrator Jared Isaacman donated a whopping $3 million to President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. super Pac.
It’s a remarkably large donation and deeply unusual for a presidential appointee who is already confirmed to their post — espeicially a NASA appointee, as the space agency typically aims to position itself as apolitical.
NASA declined to comment on the donations, saying personal contributions fall outside the scope of the space agency’s communications duties. Isaacman told CNN that he has made “political and philanthropic donations” and declined to comment further on the matter.
Columbia law professor Richard Briffault, a campaign finance and government ethics expert, told CNN in an interview last week that there is nothing illegal about making such a donation — as unusual as it is. But it does raise ethics concerns, at least from an optics standpoint.
“It goes to the question of appearances: Is this an independent public servant serving the public interest, or is this somebody who is acting as a politician?” Briffault said.
This isn’t Isaacman’s first major donation to a Trump PAC. Last year, when Isaacman was attempting to get his nomination to lead NASA reinstated, he donated about $2 million to MAGA Inc. (Trump initially pulled the nomination, as CNN reported, because Isaacman had previously donated to Democrats. It was later reinstated, and Isaacman was confirmed in December.)
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has a preexisting relationship with Isaacman, as the Isaacman has paid SpaceX to fly him on two missions to orbit. Isaacman has repeatedly said he would not favor SpaceX in his official capacity.
Musk has also closely aligned himself with Trump and donated millions to MAGA Inc. But recently, Musk also expressed some regret about taking such a substantial role in campaigns.
“I got too involved in politics,” he told The Economist during a recent interview.
SpaceX opts to bring Starship home hours ahead of schedule
SpaceX will not allow Starship to stay in orbit for 10 hours, as the company had originally planned.
Mission controllers, during a recent “checkpoint” analysis, decided to end the mission a bit early.
Huot noted that Starship was able to deploy all 26 of its Starlink satellites and the company has made contact with each of them, marking a huge mission success. But it won’t complete quite as many laps of the planet at originally hoped for.
NASA chief applauds "safe" mission
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman chimed in on social media to congratulate SpaceX on its success so far, getting the upper Starship spacecraft, or “ship,” to orbit for the first time.
SpaceX confirmed all 26 Starlinks satellites have been deployed
All 26 of SpaceX’s new Starlink V3 satellies are currently in orbit.
SpaceX already confirmed contact with at least some of them. There’s no word yet on the status of the satellites that were designed to also snap pictures of Starship’s heat shield as they flew away from the vehicle.
SpaceX has put a massive emphasis on studying and improving Starship’s heat shield. It’s designed to protect the vehicle as it makes the grueling journey back home, as diving back into Earth’s thick atmosphere can involve temperatures topping 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
