Starship Demonstrated Key Capabilities to Become a Fully Reusable Transport for Astronauts to the Moon
By Claire Cameron & Adam Kovac edited by Clara Moskowitz
SpaceX Starship will launch on July 24, 2026.
NASA/SpaceX/YouTube
SpaceX completed its second consecutive successful test flight of its Starship megarocket on Thursday. The launch hints at sustained progress after years of sloppy testing, but there is a caveat.
Just after 6:50 p.m. Eastern Time, Starship blasted into space atop SpaceX’s Super Heavy V3 booster from the company’s Starbase Launch Complex in Boca Chica, Texas. After two and a half minutes, the booster separated from the Starship and returned to Earth. SpaceX aimed for the reusable booster to make a precise landing in the Gulf of Mexico, but that part of the mission did not go as planned. The thruster’s landing burn appeared to fail, resulting in a spectacular explosion when it hit the water.
Once in space, however, Starship successfully deployed its payload of 20 Starlink V3 satellites, some of which were armed with cameras to check its heat shield and provide the public on the ground with in-flight views of the rocket in space.
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The Starlink satellites are the same ones that SpaceX plans to use to further develop its high-speed orbital internet constellation. But for the purposes of this test, the Starlink craft simply attempted to establish laser communications with the wider network, before ultimately collapsing into Earth’s atmosphere.
Ultimately, SpaceX wants to use Spacecraft as a working rocket, replacing the smaller Falcon 9. Starship, capable of carrying 100 tons of cargo to orbit, will be capable of carrying many more Starlinks at a time than the Falcon 9.
Alone in space, Starship also showed improvements from its last test flight, successfully reigniting one of its six Raptor engines for a brief burn. The spacecraft did not attempt this feat during its previous test flight in May because the Raptor’s engine shut down prematurely during launch.
The flight, initially scheduled for last week but delayed, ended after an hour and five minutes. After deploying its satellites, Starship successfully crashed into the Indian Ocean, north of Australia, although it briefly caught fire in the water.
This test, generally successful, is good news for SpaceX’s ambitions, but it is also important for the future of manned space exploration. NASA hopes to use Starship to bring humans to and from the Moon as part of its Artemis program.
If SpaceX manages to prepare a lunar variant of Starship in time, NASA could use it to send humans to the surface of the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years, as early as 2028.
A watchdog report released in March found that SpaceX was lagging behind in this effort, and the space agency is also funding the development of a Blue Origin lunar lander for the task.
Time is running out for both companies: NASA Artemis IIIa crewed mission to test the two vehicles’ key capabilities in low Earth orbit, is expected to launch before the end of next year. The current plan is to try to dock NASA’s Orion crew capsule with Starship, but SpaceX has yet to show it can put Starship into orbit in the first place. That means a lot more test flights, at least.
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