SpaceX Starship Soars in Crucial Super Heavy Test Flight

SpaceX launched its 13th Super Heavy-Starship test flight Friday, sending the massive rocket system on a dramatic mission that ended with mixed results: the Super Heavy booster made an on-target but unusually “hard” splashdown off the Texas Gulf Coast after engine problems, while the Starship upper stage completed a successful suborbital flight to the Indian Ocean.

The 397-foot-tall, two-stage vehicle lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in South Texas at 5:51 p.m. ET. Driven by 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines and roughly 16 million pounds of thrust, the rocket carved a bright path into the sky, drawing crowds of local residents and visitors along the coast.

The flight followed a scrubbed launch attempt on July 16, when onboard computers called off liftoff in the final moments after four Raptor engines failed to start correctly. SpaceX reviewed the telemetry, replaced six engines and aimed for a Thursday launch, but low clouds forced the company to wait another 24 hours.

Conditions improved Friday. With the weather finally cooperating, all 33 engines on the first stage ignited as expected, and the Super Heavy-Starship climbed away through a mostly clear sky with its familiar thunderous roar.

The mission marked the second test flight of SpaceX’s third-generation Super Heavy-Starship design. It built on data gathered during the first “V3” flight in May, when the booster missed its intended landing zone and the Starship upper stage experienced an early engine shutdown during its climb toward space.

On Friday, the Super Heavy booster appeared to perform well through ascent and completed the flip maneuver needed to position itself for a “boostback” burn, the engine firing designed to reverse its trajectory and steer it back toward the Texas coast.

Trouble emerged later in the sequence. SpaceX said the boostback burn ended ahead of schedule. As the booster descended toward the Gulf of Mexico, only 10 of 13 engines restarted for the landing burn intended to slow the vehicle before splashdown. By the time it struck the water, just five engines appeared to be firing, and the booster hit at a higher speed than planned.

Ultimately, SpaceX wants the Super Heavy booster to fly back to its launch tower, where giant mechanical arms known as “chopsticks” are designed to catch it in midair. That maneuver depends on a controlled, relatively slow final descent. Friday’s hard splashdown underscored why the company has chosen to conduct the early version-3 recovery attempts in the Gulf as a safety measure.

The Starship upper stage, meanwhile, continued its climb to space with all six of its Raptor engines operating smoothly.

Once coasting along its suborbital trajectory, the Starship deployed 20 third-generation Starlink internet satellites in a real-world test of the rocket’s Pez-like payload dispenser, releasing the satellites one at a time from a slot near the nose of the vehicle.

Six of those satellites were equipped with cameras to inspect the Starship’s heat shield tiles and general condition to help engineers assess the usefulness of such video for determining the health of future Starships before reentry.

In a final test, the Starship briefly reignited one of the Raptor engines to demonstrate its ability to restart in space, which will be required for future flights to the moon.

The spacecraft then faced the blazing heat of a belly-first reentry before flipping upright and settling to a dramatic rocket-powered splashdown northwest of Australia 1 hour and 5 minutes after launch.

The Starlinks, on the same suborbital trajectory as the Starship, were expected to fall back into the atmosphere and burn up — or as SpaceX puts it, “demise” — before reaching the sea.

Engine issues aside, the Starship’s performance was welcome news to NASA, which is counting on a variant of the upper stage to serve as a lunar lander for astronauts in the agency’s Artemis program.

For moon missions, SpaceX will need to launch up to 15 or so Super Heavy-Starship tankers to refuel the lander before it can head for the moon to await the arrival of astronauts in a Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule.

From there, the 165-foot-tall lander will carry two crew members down to the surface, landing vertically near the moon’s south pole. The astronauts will then ride an external elevator down to the surface and back up again when their exploration is complete.

With the first such landing targeted for 2028, SpaceX must ramp up its Super Heavy-Starship test schedule to get the vehicle certified for human spaceflight and to demonstrate the reliability required to safely launch more than a dozen tankers within days of the lander’s launch.

As of now, the moon lander variant has not yet flown, and no Starship of any kind has yet been put into Earth orbit. Many NASA veterans have criticized the complexity of the mission architecture and the number of flights that will be needed to get a single lander to the moon.

The Government Accountability Office said in a report released Thursday that SpaceX faces major challenges getting the Super Heavy-Starship ready for operational use.

“SpaceX’s progress in developing its cryogenic fuel management technologies is a top risk for the program,” the GAO said. “At present, SpaceX’s plan for (moon missions) requires on-orbit propellant transfer between multiple Starship vehicles in low-Earth orbit before the HLS (Human Landing System) Starship can be sent to and dock with the Orion spacecraft in lunar orbit.”

Another concern is completing development of the upgraded Raptor engines, the GAO said, “addressing issues identified through testing.”

“Furthermore, SpaceX is more than a year behind its original schedule for key events,” the GAO said. “These include the critical design review, the long duration and propellant transfer demonstrations and the uncrewed lunar landing flight test.”

The agency said moon lander officials “also stated that they anticipate encountering technical challenges in the development of the third version of the Starship vehicle, which SpaceX plans to use for the first Starship orbital test flights.”

NASA managers are hedging their bets.

Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is also working on moon landers for NASA to carry both cargo and Artemis astronauts to the lunar surface. The spacecraft will be launched by the company’s New Glenn rocket. That lander, too, will require refueling in space.

If the Starship lander isn’t ready in time to meet NASA’s landing target, the agency may be able to use Blue Origin’s lander instead.

But during preparations to test-fire the main engines of the third New Glenn rocket, the launcher exploded in a spectacular fireball, virtually vaporizing the rocket and seriously damaging its pad. The company hopes to resume test flights by the year’s end, but few details have been provided. 

In the meantime, NASA is pressing ahead with preparations for an interim Artemis flight next year in low-Earth orbit. Four astronauts will be launched in an Orion capsule to test the rendezvous and docking procedures that will be needed in lunar orbit for a moon landing mission.

The crew will dock with a Blue Origin lander, open hatches and float inside as part of the test flight. They then will rendezvous and dock with a Starship. But in that case, a modified production model will be used instead of an actual moon lander. It will have no crew accommodations and the astronauts will not go inside.