SpaceX launched the latest test of its mega rocket Starship on Tuesday night and completed the first-ever deployment of a test payload—eight dummy satellites—into space. After just over an hour coasting through space, Starship splashed down as planned in the Indian Ocean.
Starship blasted off from Starbase, SpaceX’s launch site in south Texas, just after 6:30 p.m. It was the 10th test for the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket, which SpaceX and NASA hope to use to get astronauts back on the moon.
NASA has ordered two Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s ultimate goal is Mars.
No crew members were aboard the demo launch.
The test also included the successful return of the craft’s Super Heavy Booster, which splashed down in the Atlantic after testing a landing-burn engine sequence.
The Starship itself continued to orbit the Earth—passing from daylight in Texas through night and back into daytime again—ahead of the planned splashdown. Before the craft hit the waves, its engines fired, flipping its position so it entered the water upright with the nose cone pointed upward.
The successful demo came after a year of mishaps. Back-to-back tests in January and March ended just minutes after liftoff, raining wreckage into the ocean. The most recent test in May—the ninth try—ended when the spacecraft tumbled out of control and broke apart.
SpaceX later redesigned the Super Heavy booster with larger and stronger fins for greater stability, according to a company post on the social platform X this month.
The first Starship exploded minutes into its inaugural test flight in 2023.
SpaceX’s first batch of Starlink satellites were launched in 2019 from a Falcon rocket that lifted off from Cape Canaveral.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
—By Christina Larson, Associated Press
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