SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship makes a check flight from Starbase, Texas, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025.
Eric Homosexual/AP
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Eric Homosexual/AP
SpaceX launched one other of its mammoth Starship rockets on a check flight Monday, efficiently making it midway around the globe whereas releasing mock satellites like final time.
Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever constructed — thundered into the night sky from the southern tip of Texas. The booster peeled away and made a managed entry into the Gulf of Mexico as deliberate, with the spacecraft skimming area earlier than descending into the Indian Ocean. Nothing was recovered.
“Hey, welcome again to Earth, Starship,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot introduced as staff cheered. “What a day.”
It was the eleventh check flight for a full-scale Starship, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk intends to make use of to ship folks to Mars. NASA’s want is extra instant. The area company can’t land astronauts on the moon by decade’s finish with out the 403-foot (123-meter) Starship, the reusable car meant to get them from lunar orbit right down to the floor and again up.
As an alternative of remaining inside Launch Management as common, Musk stated that for the primary time he was going exterior to observe — “rather more visceral.”
The earlier check flight in August — a hit after a string of explosive failures — adopted an identical path with related objectives. Extra maneuvering was constructed on this time, particularly for the spacecraft. SpaceX performed a sequence of checks in the course of the spacecraft’s entry over the Indian Ocean as follow for future landings again on the launch web site.
Like earlier than, Starship carried up eight mock satellites mimicking SpaceX’s Starlinks. Your entire flight lasted simply over an hour, originating from Starbase close to the Mexican border.
NASA’s appearing administrator Sean Duffy praised Starship’s progress. “One other main step towards touchdown People on the moon’s south pole,” he stated by way of X.
SpaceX is modifying its Cape Canaveral launch websites to accommodate Starships, along with the a lot smaller Falcon rockets used to move astronauts and provides to the Worldwide House Station for NASA.
