SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship makes a take a look at flight from Starbase, Texas, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025.
Eric Gay/AP
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Eric Gay/AP
SpaceX launched one other of its mammoth Starship rockets on a take a look at flight Monday, efficiently making it midway all over the world whereas releasing mock satellites like final time.
Starship — the greatest and strongest 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 take a look at flight for a full-scale Starship, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk intends to make use of to ship individuals to Mars. NASA’s want is extra rapid. The area company can’t land astronauts on the moon by decade’s finish with out the 403-foot (123-meter) Starship, the reusable automobile meant to get them from lunar orbit right down to the floor and again up.
Instead of remaining inside Launch Control as common, Musk mentioned that for the primary time he was going exterior to observe — “way more visceral.”
The earlier take a look at flight in August — successful after a string of explosive failures — adopted an analogous path with related targets. More maneuvering was constructed on this time, particularly for the spacecraft. SpaceX performed a sequence of assessments through the spacecraft’s entry over the Indian Ocean as observe for future landings again on the launch web site.
Like earlier than, Starship carried up eight mock satellites mimicking SpaceX’s Starlinks. The complete flight lasted simply over an hour, originating from Starbase close to the Mexican border.
NASA’s appearing administrator Sean Duffy praised Starship’s progress. “Another main step towards touchdown Americans on the moon’s south pole,” he mentioned through 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 International Space Station for NASA.
