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SpaceX then appeared to fall short of another key milestone planned for the mission: using Starship to deploy a slate of dummy satellites. Starship made it to space but launch commentators said the vehicle’s bay door didn’t open as expected, cutting that test short. The satellite simulators are designed to mimic upgraded Starlink internet satellites the rocket is meant to carry when it’s operational.
Then around 35 minutes into the mission, as Starship hurtled toward Earth’s atmosphere on its journey home, the livestream started to cut in and out. At one point, SpaceX commentator Dan Huot told viewers the vehicle had lost control and that the rocket was spinning, unable to set itself up for a controlled reentry and to withstand the intense heat and pressure of the atmosphere during descent. The vehicle “met its demise,” said another SpaceX commentator, Jessie Anderson.
“We have been dealing with some leaks on the ship,” Huot said, referring to its fuel tank systems. “This is also what led to that loss of attitude control.”
SpaceX stressed that the company learns from every test flight. “We’re going to learn, iterate and iterate over and over again,” Anderson said.
After the launch, Musk had planned an all-hands-style talk with employees at 8 p.m. local time out of the company’s newly incorporated city, Starbase, in South Texas. As of 9 p.m., it hadn’t started and there was no word on why. The mission came as Musk, the world’s richest person, says he is stepping back from his political work in Washington and focusing on his business empire.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses Starship flights, said it was aware “an anomaly occurred” and is actively working with SpaceX on the event. There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property, it added.
The stakes for Tuesday’s flight were particularly high after flights in January and March were cut short just minutes after takeoff when the spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico, sending streams of debris raining down from the sky and disrupting air travel.
The results failed to live up to earlier flights when the vehicle made it to space, partially circled the globe, survived the plunge through the atmosphere and splashed into the ocean roughly as planned.
Starship is critical to Musk’s and SpaceX’s Mars vision. As the world’s largest and most powerful launch system, Starship is meant to serve as the primary spacecraft for transporting people to the Red Planet and then bringing them back to Earth. Musk has recently declared that SpaceX will send a Starship rocket to Mars carrying robots built by his electric car company, Tesla Inc., as early as 2026 — an incredibly ambitious timeline.
SpaceX also holds contracts with NASA worth roughly $4 billion to land the agency’s astronauts on the moon with Starship — making it a key part of America’s space ambitions.
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