SpaceX completed its fourth test flight of Starship, the most powerful launch vehicle ever constructed, from Boca Chica Beach on the South Texas Coast on Thursday morning, and it was one hell of a show.
Right on cue, at 7:50 a.m. (CST) the 397-foot-tall rocket, comprised of the Super Heavy reusable booster and the Starship crew capsule, erupted from the launch pad, 32 of the 33 methane-powered Raptor engines firing up and sending it aloft with 16 million pounds of thrust. On SpaceX’s livestream, employees and spectators whooped and hollered as it climbed.
Then they got quiet, waiting to see if the lessons from the previous attempts and the software and hardware updates from the most recent try in March were going to pay off with a successful test flight. Would they be able to put the Super Heavy and Starship through their paces and bring both through the process intact?
It was a tall order.
Starship’s previous test flights launched in April 2023 (IFT-1), November 2023 (IFT-2) and last March (IFT-3), each of them ending in an explosion, with the last two ending unceremoniously with a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
Thus, going into the launch (IFT-4), SpaceX officials from founder and CEO Elon Musk down seemed intent on managing expectations. The goal would be “demonstrating the ability to return and reuse Starship and Super Heavy,” according to a SpaceX statement, by getting both through the flight without a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Then the Super Heavy would be aiming for a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico while Starship was expected to splash down in the Indian Ocean landing.
(SpaceX seemed to have been bracing for another surprise explosion or two to the point the company’s application for a launch permit from the Federal Aviation Administration outlined the three ways that Starship and the Super Heavy were most likely to suddenly explode — due to a thermal shield failure, a loss of control during the flight or an engine failure during a landing burn – so that the explosion wouldn’t automatically trigger an FAA investigation.)
As the countdown moved into its final 30 minutes, Kate Tice and other SpaceX commentators leading the company’s livestream video, repeatedly reminded viewers that the goal was not to recover the booster or Starship on this flight, but to simply get both through the atmosphere before they exploded. And then it all went swimmingly.
Minutes after launching into the gray morning, the spacecraft began flipping through the air as the Super Heavy booster and Starship separated, just as planned. Once that was done, the carefully coordinated dance continued. The 165-foot-tall Starship fired up its engines and soared into space while the Super Heavy planed away.
The booster usually exploded right around now, but this time tit didn’t and then the booster’s engines fired. The Super Heavy flipped itself upright. Within moments the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, its landing site, came into view from a camera mounted on the booster that was streaming uninterrupted as the Super Heavy completed its task thanks to Starlink satellites.
Meanwhile, Starship’s cameras captured the gleaming expanse of space and then the atmosphere as the vehicle began its reentry. This was the other point when it seemed quite reasonable to expect another explosion.
But instead, Starship continued coming back in, bathed in light and streaks of fire as it hurtled down, all of it continuing to stream, uninterrupted from a camera on the vessel.
Starship continued coming back in, bathed in light and streaks of fire as it hurtled down, all of it continuing to stream, uninterrupted from a camera on the vessel.
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The camera went in and out, and cracked and became obscured by debris as Starship plummeted. Each time, the SpaceX crowd on the livestream went quiet, as if waiting to hear the craft had come apart.
At a little over 30 miles altitude, the steering flaps began to crumple and break apart. “The question is how much of the ship is left,” Tice said.
But it didn’t. As starship’s altitude monitor approached zero, engineers ordered a final maneuver, flipping the spacecraft vertical, just before it dropped into the Indian Ocean.
“Despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!” Musk declared on X while the livestream at SpaceX headquarters was filled with cheering happy faces and the hosts of the event roasting marshmallows with enormous Starship-shaped silver butane lighters.
NASA officials must be breathing a sigh of relief. First, Boeing’s Starliner, the alternative to SpaceX’s commercial crew vehicle, finally launched on Wednesday, giving the federal space agency a viable non-Musk way of getting astronauts to the ISS. At the same time, SpaceX is contracted to start taking astronauts to the lunar south pole for Artemis III, which is on the docket for 2026, and they just might pull it off.
It’s a fast turnaround time. But working at a pace based on the engineering method of “rapid spiral development,” SpaceX is going for it. The company started the year with four Super Heavy rockets, and in March Musk stated the plan is to conduct six test flights within the year.
Dianna Wray
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