SpaceX’s effort to bring its entire Starship vehicle back to the launch pad ended in failure Friday when the booster veered toward the Gulf of Mexico and exploded. The spacecraft, however, reached orbit in the company’s most ambitious test flight to date.
Rather than attempting a return to its Texas launch site after liftoff, the first-stage booster was redirected toward a designated area offshore.
The spacecraft continued flying despite the booster’s loss. Unless another problem arises, it will begin steering back toward the pad Saturday, with the mission expected to last up to 22 hours.
This marks the first time Starship has attempted to return to the launch site from orbit, where mechanical arms mounted on the launch tower are designed to catch it in midair. The destroyed booster prevented Elon Musk’s company from achieving the planned double catch.
SpaceX’s broader objective is to recover every component of the rocket so it can be reused—a feat no company has yet accomplished anywhere in the world.
Musk believes that capability could enable the rapid, reliable launch schedule needed to establish bases on the moon and eventually send humans to Mars.
Soon after reaching orbit, Starship deployed 26 of SpaceX’s most advanced Starlink satellites. The vehicle is scheduled to complete 15 circuits around Earth at an altitude of roughly 170 miles before returning to the launch site for Saturday’s planned finale.
SpaceX had already completed three successful booster catches at its sprawling Starbase facility near the US-Mexico border, making Friday’s failure particularly unexpected.
“Well, that certainly isn’t the news that we had hoped to hear for today,” SpaceX launch commentator Kate Tice said. She added that the outcome reflected the company’s extensive safety protocols designed to protect the launch pad. SpaceX did not explain what caused the failure.
Friday’s flight was the first attempt to catch the upgraded booster, which stands 236 feet (72 meters) tall and is intended for future missions to the moon and Mars. It was also the company’s first effort to catch the spacecraft, which measures 171 feet (52 meters) long.
Combined, the two stages create the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, rising 407 feet (124 meters) above the ground.
The spacecraft components from Starship’s previous 14 flights all ended up in the ocean, either as planned at the end of a mission or after breaking apart in fiery debris. During the vehicle’s first full-scale test flight in 2023, several engines failed to ignite and the tumbling rocket’s self-destruct system was triggered.
The previous test, conducted in September, was the first to reach orbit, but SpaceX made no attempt to recover either rocket stage.
SpaceX expects to begin launching Starships from Florida within a few months and from Louisiana within several years.
Expanded launch infrastructure, paired with complete rocket reusability, is “how you go from zero launches to 10 to 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 to 100,000,” Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, said at a NASA technology summit last week at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.
SpaceX’s smaller Falcon rockets will continue launching from Cape Canaveral with astronauts bound for the International Space Station under NASA missions. Falcon vehicles will also carry Starlink satellites from California and continue delivering other satellites to orbit for now. Musk ultimately intends for Starship to replace the Falcon fleet.
“Falcon rockets are still not fully reusable. We still throw that second stage away every single flight. Starship, we’re going to catch both the first stage and second stage,” Dontchev said before Friday’s launch.
NASA is spending billions of dollars with SpaceX to use Starship to land Artemis astronauts on the moon. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is the other leading contender.
NASA plans to decide one year before the Artemis IV lunar landing—expected to be the first crewed moon landing in more than half a century—whether astronauts will reach the surface aboard Musk’s Starship or Bezos’ Blue Moon.
During next summer’s Artemis III mission, astronauts will practice docking their capsule with a Blue Moon and then a Starship in orbit around Earth. The mission is intended to prepare the way for an Artemis lunar landing as early as 2028.
“We are looking forward to some of that on-orbit Starlink capability on Artemis III,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said on X after Starship reached orbit.