SpaceX launched the first test flight of its upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster on Friday, with mostly positive results.
The powerful rocket, powered by 33 methane-fueled main engines, pulled away from SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in south Texas at 5:30 p.m. CDT (6:30 p.m. EDT; 10:30 p.m. UTC) on Friday. Within a few seconds, the 408-foot-tall (124-meter) rocket, the largest ever built, surpassed the launch tower and turned east over the Gulf of Mexico.
Starship splashed down on its target in the Indian Ocean just over an hour later to conclude the first flight of the latest version of SpaceX’s stainless steel megarocket. Starship V3 performed better in its debut than the first flights of Starship V1 and V2 in 2023 and 2025. Both previous versions of Starship broke down during launch on their maiden flights.
SpaceX officials seemed pleased with Starship V3’s performance on Friday. Elon Musk, the company’s founder and CEO, congratulated his engineers with a post on X: “Congratulations SpaceX team on the epic first launch and landing of Starship V3! You scored a goal for humanity.”
“Congratulations and many thanks to the SpaceX team who always deliver,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s second-in-command, wrote in an X post. “This was an incredible first flight of an all-new vehicle. Our collective future flying among the stars has become much closer.”
NASA leaders trust SpaceX to provide Starship as Human-rated lunar landerThey were closely watching the launch. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was in Texas to witness the launch in person. He praised SpaceX for an “incredible V3 spacecraft launch.”
Starship’s twelfth test flight was a it’s been coming for a long time. Starship’s final test flight took off last October. The gap of more than seven months was the longest interval between Starship flights since the program’s first full-scale launch in April 2023. SpaceX used the time to complete construction and activation of a second launch pad at Starbase as engineers guided Starship V3 through ground testing, which had its own share of setbacks.
