Watch SpaceX convey Starship all of the manner house on its tenth flight check through NewsFlicks

SpaceX introduced its first Starship since an coincidence this summer time that brought about one of the most rockets to blow up on a check stand on the corporate’s headquarters in southern Texas. 

However the rocket made an immense comeback on Tuesday, effectively achieving area and coasting midway all over the world sooner than shedding softly into the Indian Ocean as deliberate.

The check used to be SpaceX’s tenth Starship release, following a up to date succession of screw ups and mishaps for the gargantuan prototype. 

Starship, a 400-foot-tall, super-heavy-lift rocket and spaceship, blasted off from SpaceX’s non-public area port in Starbase, Texas, which is now an reliable town, at 6:30 p.m. CT. The development used to be broadcast on each SpaceX’s website online and X, the social platform bought through the trade’ billionaire founder Elon Musk. It got here two days after SpaceX’s preliminary release try, when controllers came upon a liquid oxygen gas leak within the floor techniques, Musk mentioned on X. The corporate scrubbed some other check out on Monday because of climate dangers.

By means of all appearances, Starship aced its one-hour check, struggling simplest minor harm to a flap and the aft skirt all the way through the inferno of reentering Earth’s surroundings.

“We are more or less being imply to this Starship somewhat bit,” mentioned Dan Huot, a SpaceX spokesperson and release commentator. “We are actually looking to put it in the course of the paces and more or less poke on what a few of its susceptible issues are.”

SpaceX’s Starship reaches area all the way through its tenth flight check on Aug. 26, 2025.
Credit score: SpaceX / X screenshot

The main objectives this time round for SpaceX have been to check new touchdown maneuvers for the booster within the Gulf of Mexico, together with experiments with other engine configurations to review how backups carry out all the way through touchdown burns. The send additionally launched 8 dummy Starlink satellites that have been stacked and deployed like a Pez dispenser inside the send. It used to be the primary time a Starship ever simulated a payload supply in area.

“Open the pod bay doorways, HAL,” Huot mentioned because the payload demonstration started, referencing a well-known line from 2001: A Area Odyssey.

Along with that workout, the send effectively relit an engine whilst coasting via area.

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SpaceX has confronted public scrutiny for its earlier Starship check screw ups. Its management insists that the corporate’s speedy break-it-fix-it technique is all a part of the corporate’s distinctive iterative philosophy — in stark distinction with NASA‘s a lot slower and cautious means.

The coincidence on June 18 came about all the way through a floor check as a Starship used to be being fueled. A high-pressure nitrogen tank with undetected harm had burst, in keeping with an organization commentary, inflicting the rocket to damage aside and catch hearth. Nobody used to be harm within the incident, and SpaceX has since modified inspection and protection procedures.

That explosion adopted a string of inflight screw ups that have been setbacks from previous growth. Throughout the final release on Might 27, the booster were given the higher level into area, nevertheless it did not continue to exist its fall again towards Earth. Engineers say they flew the booster at a steeper attitude than same old to check its limits, which put an excessive amount of tension on a part of the gas machine and brought about it to damage aside. 

In the meantime, the send saved flying however advanced a gas leak throughout the nostril cone. This brought about stress issues that averted it from liberating mock satellites and finishing an engine restart in area. The send sooner or later misplaced regulate and burned up over the sea. Engineers traced the issue to a erroneous phase within the gas machine. The former two assessments — flights 7 and eight — failed even previous all the way through the ascent level. 

SpaceX’s Starship survives in the course of the finish of its tenth flight check, softly splashing down into the Indian Ocean, on Aug. 26, 2025.
Credit score: SpaceX / X screenshot

However Tuesday’s good fortune alerts the Starship program is again heading in the right direction.

“We most certainly gave it somewhat little bit of additional time within the oven however made it during re-entry,” Huot mentioned. “Promised most pleasure. Starship delivered.”

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NASA will depend on SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the moon underneath a $4.2 billion contract. The plan is for a changed Starship to get the Artemis III and IV crews from the orbiting Orion spacecraft to the lunar floor. However sooner than that may occur, SpaceX has to grasp refueling its spaceship in area. 

Starship could also be a keenness undertaking for Musk, who needs to sooner or later ship people to Mars and construct a self-sustaining town at the Pink Planet.

“Existence can’t simply be about fixing one tragic drawback after some other. There should be additionally causes to rise up within the morning and be eager about the longer term,” Musk mentioned on Monday. “A long term the place we’re a spacefaring civilization is infinitely extra thrilling than one the place we don’t seem to be.”