It lasted about an hour, the third and most complex of the flight tests of the Starship, the spaceship designed by SpaceX to be completely and rapidly reusable and intended for future missions to the Moon and Mars: enough time to reach the orbit and performed most of the numerous and complex tasks envisaged, but during the re-entry phase into the atmosphere, the signal disappeared. Shortly thereafter, SpaceX ended the live broadcast dedicated to the test by declaring that the ship had been lost.
However, the results of this third test were so important that they still constituted a success. For the first time, in fact, the gigantic 122 meter high Super Heavy rocket, on which the Starship was integrated, reached the speed sufficient to reach orbit. “The Starship has reached orbital speed,” wrote Elon Musk on the X platform, who for the 22 years of SpaceX could not have imagined a better gift. Congratulations from NASA were not long in coming either: “successful test flight!”, wrote the chief administrator of the American space agency, Bill Nelson, on X. “The spaceship has risen into the sky. Together, through Artemis, we are making giant strides to bring humanity back to the Moon and then look to Mars,” Nelson wrote again, referring to the international program to return astronauts to the lunar surface.
From Starbase, SpaceX’s launch site in Texas, the launch that began the test was about an hour late. A few minutes later, the two stages separated successfully, and about 9 minutes after launch the rocket reached its intended orbit. The test also succeeded for the opening and closing test of the door for the release of the satellites and for the simulation of the propellant transfer, which were among the other objectives of the test. The re-entry into the atmosphere then began and soon in the live images some fragments detached, perhaps elements of the coating, but there are no official statements in this regard. Then the signal disappeared and the wait began, but the hope of restoring the connection was dashed.
It should have been a controlled re-entry, which should have ended with a splashdown in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, and accompanied by the first re-ignition of the Space Heavy’s Raptor engines in space. This phase of the test would have been crucial to demonstrate the rocket’s actual reusability. Neither the Starship nor the Super Heavy survived to splashdown, but SpaceX says the test still achieved several key objectives.
Called Integrated Flight Test-3 (IFT-3), it was Starship’s third test following those in April and November 2023, neither of which went exactly as expected. In fact, in the first test flight, the two stages of the rocket did not separate correctly and the flight ended after just four minutes, when the vehicle was detonated for safety reasons. In the second test the two stages of the rocket separated, but before the second stage could reach orbit contact was lost and it was then detonated again about 12 minutes after launch.
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