SpaceX Starship Falls Short on Its First Orbital Launch Attempt

After years of design, regulatory hurdles, and prototypes, the SpaceX Starship finally launched on its first orbital test on Thursday morning. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite make it there. The uncrewed Starship exploded in mid-air several minutes after launch, but the aerospace firm is keeping things upbeat, pointing out that everything after successfully clearing the tower is gravy.

Before launch, SpaceX leadership stressed that making it to space was not a foregone conclusion. Starship has only flown a few times, and never with the Super Heavy booster attached. The spacecraft needs the first stage to escape Earth’s gravity, but it can lift off from low-gravity environments like Mars without assistance.

Everything started off textbook—the rocket cleared the tower and accelerated upward with twice the thrust of NASA’s Apollo-era Saturn V rocket. Starship even breezed through max q, the point in the flight where the vehicle experiences the greatest atmospheric resistance.

Problems started when the time came to decouple Starship from the first stage. The plan was for the rocket to spin, positioning Super Heavy to drop off and coast down to a soft landing in the ocean (SpaceX is hoping to catch Super Heavy so it can be reused in the future). However, the vehicle kept spinning, which SpaceX commentators agreed “does not appear to be a nominal situation.” Moments later, the rocket exploded. The SpaceX team was still cheering at that, but not as hard as they did when the rocket was doing well.

SpaceX is now picking up the pieces (literally) and looking toward its next milestone. Starship and Super Heavy started off strong, and the team will have to figure out what caused the “rapid disassembly” during the turn maneuver. Hopefully, it doesn’t take too long for SpaceX to track down the problem—it has already made big plans for Starship.

Starship is SpaceX’s next-generation design, which it hopes to eventually use in place of the venerable Falcon 9 rocket. Starship, along with Super Heavy, is the most powerful rocket in the world, with enough thrust to lift even the heaviest payloads to high orbit and visit distant locales like the Moon and Mars. It’s key to CEO Elon Musk’s supposed desire to colonize the red planet.

NASA has also contracted with SpaceX to use Starship to land Artemis astronauts on the lunar surface. The first crewed landing will come with Artemis III, which is currently scheduled for 2025. But that window could slip again, which would give SpaceX even more time to work out Starship’s kinks. SpaceX also needs Starship to launch its larger V2 Starlink internet satellites.