The fourth time’s the charm, at least for SpaceX. Elon Musk’s aerospace company on Thursday morning sent its Starship spacecraft, a fully reusable megarocket designed to travel to the Moon and Mars, into orbit.
Starship launched at around 8:50 a.m. ET, ejecting its Super Heavy Booster booster several minutes later. For the first time, the booster made a successful splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
About an hour later, Starship — mostly intact — splashed down in the Indian Ocean, completing its first-ever successful landing burn just before it hit the water. It’s unclear exactly how much of the spacecraft survived the re-entry.
“Despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!” Musk said on X, formerly Twitter, after the test finished. “Congratulations @SpaceX team on an epic achievement.”
The fourth test can be viewed in its entirety on SpaceX’s account on X, where it hosted a livestream of the endeavor.
SpaceX first unveiled plans for the 400-foot Starship in 2017 before making its first launch attempt in April 2023. In that attempt, the Starship failed, as did SpaceX’s self-destrucr system. The Federal Aviation Administration investigated the incident and gave approval for a second flight in November, which showed a better performance before it exploded — twice — just minutes into the air.
The hope was that Thursday’s attempt would be more successful — and there was reason to believe that might be the case. SpaceX’s third test created a wealth of new data that showed a lack any critical safety issues, according to the FAA, although its upper stage fell to pieces on reentry and the company was forced to explode the Super Heavy booster above the Gulf of Mexico. On May 23, SpaceX completed its second wet dress rehearsal with two stacked prototype stages.
The Starship rocket received “several software and hardware upgrades” to address issues from the last test. SpaceX also made some operational changes to improve performance. Like the last test, the fourth flight aims to splash down in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX’s main priority for this test is to collect more data and get Starship through the extreme heat of reentering the atmosphere.
“We’re continuing to rapidly develop Starship, putting flight hardware in a flight environment to learn as quickly as possible as we build a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond,” SpaceX said in a statement.