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BROWNSVILLE, Tx. — Just weeks after SpaceX stunned audiences with a precision landing of a giant rocket booster, the company conducted another test flight with an attempt to steer the booster back into the mechanical arms, or "chopsticks," of a launch tower, but did not meet the required criteria and abandoned the booster catch Tuesday.
The nearly 400-foot-tall Starship system took flight from the company's Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas.
The two-stage megarocket, which features the Starship spacecraft stacked atop the Super Heavy booster, lifted off during a 30-minute window that opened at 3 p.m. MST Tuesday, livestreamed on the company's X account, and attended by President-elect Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
This uncrewed trial marked the fastest turnaround time yet in SpaceX's test campaign for Starship, which will play a key role in NASA's cornerstone Artemis program. Aiming to put boots on the moon as soon as 2026, the space agency plans to use the rocket's upper stage, the Starship spacecraft, as a lunar lander ferrying astronauts to the moon's surface.
The goal of these test flights is to hash out how SpaceX might one day recover and rapidly re-fly Super Heavy boosters and Starship spacecraft for future missions. Quickly reusing rocket parts is considered essential to drastically reducing the time and cost of getting cargo — or ships of people — to space.
Developing Starship, a reusable launch system
The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches, said it did not have to undertake the lengthy process of reviewing a launch license alteration because the flight path of this week's test flight is expected to closely mimic an earlier test flight.
The fifth integrated test flight of Starship launched on Oct. 13 garnered international attention with SpaceX's ambitious attempt to maneuver the 232-foot-tall Super Heavy back to a gargantuan landing structure anchored by a pair of giant metal pincers, which the company calls "chopsticks," after the booster broke away from the Starship spacecraft.
Starship is considered crucial to SpaceX's founding mission of eventually carrying humans to Mars for the first time, especially for NASA's Artemis program; SpaceX has government contracts worth up to nearly $4 billion to complete the task of developing a cost-effective space transportation system.
Starship's flight path
When the countdown clock struck zero Tuesday afternoon, the Super Heavy booster fired up its 33 powerful Raptor engines and propelled the Starship spacecraft, which rides atop the booster, into space.
After expending most of its fuel and detaching from the Starship spacecraft, the Super Heavy booster reversed course and steered itself back toward the launch site. The booster was intended to conduct another precision landing into the arms of the launch and landing structure — nicknamed "Mechazilla" by Musk — at the company's Starbase facility.
But the test flight team did not deem conditions favorable for a landing attempt, and the booster splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Texas.
SpaceX explained "healthy systems" and "a final manual command" are required for such landings, and the company "(accepts) no compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of the public and our team."
The Starship spacecraft, meanwhile, fired up its own six engines before entering a coasting phase as it soared through space. The capsule briefly reignited an engine about half an hour later before bracing for reentry — the process by which it veers back into the thickest part of Earth's atmosphere, the first time Starship has done so, according to SpaceX.
"That's a big deal," Garret Reisman, a former NASA astronaut who now advises for SpaceX, told CNN. "They're finicky little beasts — (the Starship rocket engines) — and it's not so easy to light them up and shut them down and light them up again."
Starship then aimed to test its limits with an aggressive angle of reentry as it headed toward splashdown in the Indian Ocean, while also removing some protective shielding off the vehicle to see whether it could survive without it.
Starship made a safe landing in the Indian Ocean and remained intact despite the rough landing trajectory.
"Turns out the vehicle had more capability than our calculations predicted, and that is why we test like we fly," SpaceX engineer Kate Tice said.
Making progress
During the fourth integrated Starship test flight in early June, the spacecraft endured significant damage as it shed numerous heat tiles designed to shield the vehicle from intense temperatures caused by the pressure and friction of reentry, but SpaceX made significant strides during the fifth integrated test flight in mid-October.
Ahead of that mission, SpaceX implemented what it called a "complete rework of the heatshield, with SpaceX technicians spending more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer, and additional protections between the flap structures."
A successful test flight on Tuesday could cue up SpaceX to begin tackling more ambitious projects, and it remains to be seen how the aborted attempt of the booster catch will factor in to those next steps. SpaceX has always said it would evaluate flight data and make a decision about a landing attempt based on real-time flight data.
"In 2025, SpaceX plans to undertake a long-duration flight test and a propellant transfer flight test," according to a recent report from NASA's Office of the Inspector General.
Demonstrating the ability to launch a Starship into orbit and then rendezvous the spacecraft with a tanker carrying fuel is considered essential to the success of NASA's Artemis program.
For the human moon landing mission, called Artemis III — facing a "critical design review" next summer, Starship may need to dock with more than a dozen fuel tankers before continuing its mission to the lunar surface.
