SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket blasted off from Texas Monday morning on its most ambitious test flight yet, aiming for a roughly 10-hour mission that would have sent the spacecraft around Earth six times, though the company ultimately decided to end the flight earlier than planned.
Minutes into the uncrewed spacecraft’s ascent, the rocket lost one of its engines, throwing into question whether the test flight would abandon its goal of reaching orbit for the first time. After several tense minutes, flight controllers decided the spacecraft was “go” for orbit and continued with the mission.
Starship successfully completed an orbital burn with just a single Raptor engine to reach the Earth’s orbit about 26 minutes after liftoff.
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“Starship is orbital,” Mission Control announced as people cheered the milestone.
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SpaceX later made the call to end Starship’s first orbital mission earlier than planned. Flight teams were expected to deorbit Starship after three hours in orbit, SpaceX said.
Around noon, Starship splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
The launch marks Starship’s 14th test flight and its first attempt to reach orbit, a major step beyond previous suborbital missions that ended with splashdowns about an hour after liftoff.
The spacecraft also deployed 26 Starlink satellites while in orbit. The Starlink V3s were operational and operating, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X.
All Starship flights so far have been uncrewed, but NASA is looking to use a future version of the spacecraft as a lunar lander for astronauts.
The longer-term goal is even more ambitious: a large fleet of Starships capable of carrying humans to Mars.
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