The flight represents an important milestone for a rocket system that could one day take humans to Mars.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket has completed its first full flight after surviving reentry, a breakthrough for the prototype system that could one day carry humans to Mars.
On three previous missions, the nearly 121-meter-high rocket exploded or disintegrated. This time, however, Starship survived re-entry and made a controlled crash into the Indian Ocean in the US state of Texas just 65 minutes after launch.
“Despite the loss of many tiles and a damaged hatch, Starship made it to a soft landing in the ocean!” wrote SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on X, the social media platform he owns.
“Today was a great day for the future of humanity as a spacefaring civilization!” he added.
Starship launched at 7:50 a.m. (12:50 GMT) from the company’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, before rising into space and flying halfway around the Earth.
It reached an altitude of nearly 211 kilometers and was traveling at more than 26,000 km/h before beginning its descent. A live feed showed parts of the spacecraft breaking off during the intense heat of re-entry, and a piece of flying debris even broke the camera lens.
The spacecraft remained sufficiently intact to transmit data to its planned landing site in the Indian Ocean.
The mission’s success represents a critical milestone in the company’s plan to develop a reusable rocket that NASA and Musk hope will take humanity to the moon and then to Mars.
NASA has commissioned the construction of a modified version of Starship to serve as the final vehicle to take astronauts to the lunar surface as part of the Artemis program. The company must now prove it can do so.
“Congratulations to SpaceX on the successful test flight of Starship this morning!” wrote NASA chief Bill Nelson on X. “We’re one step closer to returning humanity to the Moon with #Artemis – and then we’re looking ahead to Mars.”
SpaceX’s strategy is to conduct tests in the real world rather than in laboratories.
The next challenge is to develop a “fully and immediately reusable heat shield for orbit,” Musk said, promising further testing as he attempts to build a reusable satellite launch vehicle and a lunar module.
Much depends on SpaceX’s development of Starship, which NASA hopes will send astronauts back to the moon in 2026 – a rivalry with China, which plans to send its astronauts there by 2030. China has made several recent advances in its lunar program, including a second landing on the far side of the moon as part of a mission to recover lunar samples.
Starship’s first launch in April 2023 exploded about 40 km above the ground a few minutes after liftoff, while its second attempt in November exploded after reaching space. The rocket’s third test flight in March got it much farther, but broke apart on re-entry into the atmosphere about 64 km above the Indian Ocean.