SpaceX’s troubled Starship prototype pulls off successful flight after months of explosive mishaps

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage of SpaceX’s 10th test flight of its Starship megarocket. Scroll through the posts below to relive the events as they unfolded.

A SpaceX Super Heavy booster carrying the Starship spacecraft lifts off on its 10th test flight at the company's launchpad in Starbase, Texas, on Tuesday.

Whether Starship test flights end in explosive failures or valiant successes, SpaceX is striking the same tune: These are learning experiences. And perfection is not expected.

That was made clear in an update the company posted to its website a few hours after the conclusion of the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster’s 10th test flight, which was markedly more successful than three prior missions.

SpaceX made clear that the Super Heavy booster performed as intended, making a controlled splashdown in the Gulf minutes after liftoff from South Texas.

During the last Starship flight in May, the booster broke apart during the same splashdown attempt.

And the upper Starship spacecraft, which is designed to one day carry cargo or humans to orbit but flew with only dummy payloads for this test mission, made a signficiant stride forward.

The vehicle deployed mock satellites for the first time. It was also able to relight an engine in orbit.

“Moving into the critical reentry phase, Starship was able to gather data on the performance of its heatshield and structure as it was intentionally stressed to push the envelope on vehicle capabilities,” SpaceX’s post-flight recap reads. “Using its four flaps for control, the spacecraft arrived at its splashdown point in the Indian Ocean, successfully executed a landing flip, and completed the flight test with a landing burn and soft splashdown.”

Tonight’s mission will undoubtedly give SpaceX engineers some encouragement after months of setbacks. But the company’s closing remark carried the same tone as statements the company has put out after failed test missions:

A SpaceX Super Heavy booster carrying the Starship spacecraft lifts off on its 10th test flight at the company's launchpad in Starbase, Texas, on August 26.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is well known for establishing unattainable timelines for his company. But after Starship’s previous flight in May, he made clear that he hopes that today’s mission will kick off a rapid-fire string of tests.

“Launch cadence for next 3 flights will be faster, at approximately 1 every 3 to 4 weeks,” he wrote in May.

That means that if Musk gets his way, the 11th test flight of a Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket booster will occur by late September.

That plan may not be unrealistic. Because today’s mission went mostly according to plan, federal regulators likely won’t require SpaceX to undergo a formal investigation into Flight 10. Nor will the FAA likely require SpaceX to file formal paperwork to show it has resolved issues with Starship, as the company has had to do after the last three missions.

Starship is the biggest rocket ever created — by far.

The towering megarocket stands at nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall and packs 16.7 million pounds (7,590 tons) of force at liftoff.

Here’s how it stacks up to some of the largest rockets ever constructed, past and present.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at a news conference at the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C., on August 26.

Sean Duffy, a MAGA Republican who’s currently serving as both Secretary of Transportation and interim head of NASA, joined other prominent space industry figures in heaping praise on tonight’s test flight.

Duffy highlighted how tonight’s outcome might help advance NASA’s own goals — specifically because the space agency holds a $2.9 billion contract with SpaceX for Starship to carry astronauts to the lunar surface as soon as 2027.

Starship was meant to undergo a critical design review and carry out tests of how the vehicle will refuel itself in orbit for that NASA mission. No such test has taken place, though during a company livestream, SpaceX said it would attempt the fueling feat next year.

Spacesuits are shown here on display at the preview of a science exhibition marking the 10th Space Day of China in Shanghai on April 23.

When SpaceX CEO Elon Musk spoke to employees in South Texas in late May, aiming to once again stoke support for his Mars ambitions, he emphasized his overriding goal: “Progress is measured by the timeline to establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars.”

The next Mars transfer window, during which a spacecraft’s travel time to Mars can be cut in half, is coming up in late 2026.

And Musk’s road map suggests SpaceX hopes to send up to five uncrewed Starship vehicles loaded with cargo to Mars during that time — a striking timeline proposed for a vehicle that still has yet to venture to near-Earth orbit.

Separately, NASA is banking on SpaceX getting Starship ready in time to land its astronauts on the moon for a mission slated for mid-2027. That effort, part of the space agency’s Artemis program, is at the heart of the US government’s plans to beat its rival — China — to the lunar surface.

Lawmakers in DC and top NASA brass have expressed deep consternation at the idea that China could get humans to the moon first and begin laying claim to valuable lunar resources, potentially thwarting US plans to establish a permanent outpost there.

Case in point: NASA Administrator Sean Duffy recently directed the agency to fast-track plans to put a nuclear power plant on the lunar surface, saying — if another country were to achieve this feat first — it could declare a “keep-out zone.”

The feasibility of Duffy’s plan, however, is far from clear. Starship would almost certainly need to be in working order before the deployment of such a project could start.

Garrett Reisman speaks at a panel event during the TCA Winter Press Tour in Los Angeles in February 2019.

The recent setbacks that SpaceX has faced with Starship have the company’s fans and critics talking.

“The entire space industry is hoping and betting on Starship working because if it achieves its promise, it’ll also be a revolution in affordability,” said Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut and SpaceX consultant who is currently a professor of astronautical engineering at the University of Southern California, during an interview last week.

While Starship had a clean test flight tonight, the overall success of the program still is not guaranteed.

SpaceX still has to figure out how to land Starship safely back on Earth, for example, and hash out how to top off the vehicle’s fuel while it sits in orbit.

And the company’s identity and corporate goals are also so tied up in Starship that Reisman described the Spacex’s pursuits with Starship an “existential gamble.”

But tonight’s test flight was cause for celebration: “Congratulations to all my friends @spacex on what I’d definitely classify as a successful test flight of #starship today!” Reisman said via Instagram.

Jared Isaacman attends a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on April 9.

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of payments company Shift4 who has twice flown to orbit on SpaceX capsules, cheered Starship’s accomplishments during tonight’s test flight in a post on X, the social media website that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk purchased for $44 billion in 2022.

Isaacman has long had close ties to SpaceX and Musk. He commissioned the company’s Dragon spacecraft to carry him and various crewmates to orbit on missions — including Inspiration4 in 2021 and Polaris Dawn in 2024.

He was then selected to run NASA by President Donald Trump in 2024 before Trump abruptly rescinded his appointment earlier this year, just as Musk left his post in Washington.

Isaacman was a widely popular choice for NASA administrator among the commercial spaceflight industry.

Trump said he reversed his decision after a “thorough review” of Isaacman’s record — indicating he may have been punishing Isaacman for past donations to Democrats. But Isaacman said Trump’s transition team had been well aware of his history, which includes monetary support for candidates of both parties.

Trump has not yet named a new candidate for NASA administrator.

SpaceX's mega rocket Starship makes a test flight from Starbase, Texas, on Tuesday.

It’s been months since a Starship spacecraft survived reentry and made it to a controlled landing in the ocean. And SpaceX is no doubt celebrating the milestone after months of in-flight failures.

Still, there’s a long road ahead.

SpaceX needs to tackle a few as-yet-untried experiments and put the pieces of a few successes from prior test flights together.

For example: When the Starship launch system is operational, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has made clear that both the upper Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket booster — which vaults the Starship toward orbit — need to be able to make precision landings back on dry land so they can be quickly reused for another mission.

No company or government has ever accomplished that. Musk has long called a fully reusable rocket the “holy grail” of spaceflight, which is why the Starship system aims to be just that.

But the difficulties — from a physics and financial standpoint — are immense.

SpaceX has already had some success on the reusability front: the Super Heavy booster has made a few precision landings within the arms of SpaceX’s launch tower after flight.

But the company has not yet tried to bring the upper Starship spacecraft back to dry land. And that feat is even more challenging, as Starship must survive the blistering heat and violent physics of reentry in the process. No spacecraft or rocket has ever attempted to make such a landing after returning from orbital speeds.

The Starship spacecraft made a pinpoint landing in the Indian Ocean roughly one hour after the Super Heavy booster made its own controlled landing in Gulf Coast waters just east of Texas and Mexico.

SpaceX employees could be heard loudly cheering the milestone.

“Congratulations to all of our teammates here at SpaceX — it’s been a year,” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot, apparently referencing the fact that Starship has not had such a clean flight since 2024.

After three straight test flights that failed to get the Starship spacecraft to a safe landing, SpaceX appears to have finally figured out how to get this version of the vehicle back through Earth’s atmosphere intact and without losing contact.

That’s a big deal: Since SpaceX debuted a new, scaled up version of Starship in January, the spacecraft has either blown up mere minutes into flight or spun out of control.

The spacecraft did not appear to run into any such issues on today’s flight.

Starship made it to its desintation despite SpaceX’s overt attempts to find the vehicle’s limits.

“It may not be very smooth ride downhill,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot had cautioned. “But we’re doing that by design, we’re really trying to find the edges that we can operate at.”

Plasma building up on Starship’s exterior.

The Starship spacecraft is making its way toward its splashdown site in the Indian Ocean — clearly achieving a cleaner flight so far than other prototypes have in three prior tests.

Footage of the vehicle showed the spacecraft’s exterior glowing bright pink. That’s plasma building up on Starship’s exterior — the result of the spacecraft flying at more than 26,360 kilometers per hour (16,379 miles per hour), creating extreme pressure and friction that can build temperatures up to more than 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

SpaceX’s Dan Huot noted on the livestream just how much SpaceX is trying to push the vehicle to its limits to see what it can handle: “We’re kind of being mean to this Starship a little bit. We’re really trying to put it through the paces and kind of poke on what some of its weak points are.”

SpaceX just ticked off another big milestone for this mission, which appears to be going much smoother than three prior test flights this year.

Starship has successfully re-lighted one of its engines in flight. A Starship prototype has not completed such a milestone since 2024, when the company was conducting test flights of a smaller version of the vehicle.

“Second time we’ve done that. Super exciting,” said Amanda Lee, a build and reliability engineer at SpaceX who is co-hosting tonight’s webcast.

SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft lifts off from Starbase, Texas, on Tuesday.

SpaceX’s Starlink internet service is not only a cash cow for the company, helping to financially fuel the development of Starship as SpaceX rakes in money from customers around the world — but it’s also the means by which the company is delivering live views of today’s launch.

The company is using its constellation of thousands of Starlink internet satellites to relay data from Starship back down to Earth.

It’s just one more example of how SpaceX has changed the game in spaceflight. Before Starlink, most space-based internet options were relayed from satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which lies thousands of miles farther away from Earth than Starlink, and are typically much slower and incapable of high-speed or high-definition data relays.

“The amazing views we have on the vehicle today — yeah, these are brought to you by Starlink, of us deploying Starlink simulators before we deploy actual Starlinks,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot joked during the livestream.

SpaceX's megarocket Starship launches during a test flight from Starbase, Texas, on Tuesday.

At long last, SpaceX is getting to test out a new Starship feature. Over the past three test flights, the company has hoped to simulate how Starship might one day deploy satellites into orbit.

Previous attempts were thwarted by mishaps and technical issues. But today’s mission appears to be going smoother.

The “satellites” on board Starship today are not real. They’re mock spacecraft meant to simulate SpaceX’s latest version of Starlink internet-beaming satellites. (And the dummy satellites on board Starship today will not enter orbit. They’ll fall back to Earth because Starship itself is on a suborbital trajectory for this test mission.)

SpaceX was finally able to move forward with ejecting the mock payloads from a hatch located on the side of the Starship. Unlike other rockets, which deploy satellites out of a nose cone, Starship has a lateral door that must open up to allow the satellites to eject into space.

“Open the pod bay doors, Hal,” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot, referencing Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

On the company’s livestream, cheers from SpaceX employees watching the mission could be heard ringing out.

The Super Heavy rocket booster just met its watery grave, landing in the Gulf waters just east of SpaceX’s launch facilties.

SpaceX did not expect to safely land or recover the Super Heavy during this test mission.

“The upcoming flight will continue to expand the operating envelope on the Super Heavy booster, with multiple landing burn tests planned,” SpaceX noted on its website. “It will also target similar objectives as previous missions, including Starship’s first payload deployment and multiple reentry experiments geared towards returning the upper stage to the launch site for catch.”

Though SpaceX was still testing Super Heavy’s limits, the rocket appeared to make a much cleaner approach to the ocean than it did on the last flight. Cameras cut off just before splashdown, so it’s not quite clear if the vehicle landed in once piece.

But today’s showing was definitely an improvement over Super Heavy’s last performance in May, when SpaceX sent the vehicle on a particularly aggressive angle of attack.

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.

Starship then ignited its own engines and thrust itself away from the Super Heavy booster in a maneuver SpaceX calls “hot staging.”

Hot staging is essentially pushing the Starship booster away from Super Heavy by way of blunt force trauma.

The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster reached Max Q, or the point of maximum dynamic pressure during a rocket launch.

Essentially, it means the vehicle is still traveling really fast when the atmosphere is very thick, putting the highest strain on the spacecraft. Safely passing through the Max Q milestone is always a key point in any spaceflight mission.

SpaceX's mega rocket Starship makes a test flight from Starbase, Texas, on Tuesday.

The Super Heavy rocket booster, which sits beneath the Starship spacecraft, just ignited its 33 engines and began roaring toward space.

The booster will fire for two and a half minutes before the upper Starship spacecraft ignites its own six engines and breaks away.

All those rocket engines put off about as much thrust as 64 Boeing 747 jets, according to SpaceX.

Starship is by far the most powerful rocket ever constructed, boasting more than twice the thrust of NASA’s Saturn V rocket that powered the Apollo moon landings.

SpaceX just confirmed that Starship is filled up with all the methane — the fuel used for the vehicle — and liquid oxygen — the oxidizer — necessary for flight.