SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft splashed down in the Indian Ocean on Friday after the company conducted a largely successful test flight of the latest version of its massive rocket.
The journey wasn’t without a few glitches, but SpaceX employees shown on a live stream roared with joy after the test flight, which comes as the company owned by Elon Musk prepares for a potentially record-breaking IPO.
That mammoth rocket exploded into space just after 17:30 local time (2230 GMT).
The company did not intend to recover the booster or upper stage, and the final splashdown was fiery but controlled, as planned.
“Splashdown confirmed!” the company wrote on X.
SpaceX primarily aimed to demonstrate its redesigns in flight.
The third-generation Starship spacecraft performed a maneuver that saw it turn upright and re-ignite its engines for control, despite one being out of order.
It also deployed its 22 dummy satellites, including two that attempted to photograph the spacecraft’s heat shield for analysis.
The vehicle had traveled through space but was not in the correct orbit after one of the engines malfunctioned during an initial burn.
“I wouldn’t call it nominal orbital insertion,” company spokesman Dan Huot said, adding, however, that it was “within the limits” of a previously analyzed orbit.
After the Super Heavy booster separated from the upper stage as expected, Huot said on the live stream that the booster failed to complete its so-called boost-back burn.
The booster quickly fell back to Earth, uncontrolled, in the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX had no plans to retrieve the booster anyway, but still hoped for an accurate return.
Musk applauded his team on the X and called the flight “epic.”
“You scored a goal for humanity,” he said.
‘Long way to go’
Friday’s flight followed an aborted trial a day earlier.
The countdown clock stopped and started until it was determined that the last-minute red flags could not be addressed in time.
Musk quickly wrote on X that “the hydraulic pin holding the turret arm in place did not retract.” SpaceX said the problem was fixed overnight.
The company is facing extra scrutiny after SpaceX earlier this week filed with U.S. financial regulators to go public, likely in June, in what is expected to be a record IPO.
Friday marks Starship’s 12th flight overall, but the first in seven months.
The latest design is larger than its predecessor, standing at just over 407 feet (124 meters) when fully stacked.
There’s a lot riding on SpaceX’s progress: The company is under contract with Nasa to produce a modified version of Starship to serve as a lunar landing system.
The US space agency’s Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon, while China is pushing ahead with a rival effort targeting 2030 for its first manned mission.
Clayton Swope, an aerospace expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told AFP that “the upgraded version of Starship did most of what SpaceX hoped it would do during launch.”
But he noted that considerable time had passed since the last test flight.
In 2027, NASA aims to test an in-orbit rendezvous between its spacecraft and at least one lunar lander, which both SpaceX and rival Blue Origin – the company owned by Jeff Bezos – are racing to develop.
The Artemis phase is intended as a step towards carrying out a manned lunar landing before the end of 2028, and before the end of Donald Trump’s presidency.
But for Swope, “there is a long way to go and many more test flights before the Starship is ready for the next Artemis mission.”
Ahead of Friday’s test, Nasa Administrator Jared Isaacman appeared during SpaceX’s pre-launch program and said: “We’re looking forward to seeing this fly because hopefully at some point in the not-too-distant future we’ll join the earth in orbit.”
After the test, Isaacman issued praise for the X, congratulating SpaceX on “one hell of a V3 Starship launch.”
“One step closer to the Moon…one step closer to Mars,” the Nasa official said.
