Elon Musk’s SpaceX has successfully put Starship into orbit for the first time, deploying 26 next-generation Starlink satellites. However, the mission was cut short and the spacecraft erupted in a fireball following its splashdown in the Pacific.
The spacecraft blasted off from Starbase, Texas, at about 7:49 AM local time on Monday, before reaching space roughly eight minutes later. During the ascent, one of the six engines shut down early, prompting SpaceX to assess whether the spacecraft was healthy enough to continue with the orbital portion of the mission.
Despite the hiccup, controllers ultimately gave a “go for orbit” command, with a single engine restarting for a 19-second burn, placing the Starship roughly 275 km above Earth.
Starship subsequently deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites it was carrying. Each is rated for around 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity and 160 gigabits per second uplink, roughly ten and 22 times the respective capacity of V2 satellites. The new generation is designed to provide about ten times the download capacity of its predecessor, according to SpaceX, allowing each satellite to handle significantly more internet traffic.
Sky News science and technology editor Tom Clarke said the spacecraft would not be recovered “because it’s just blown up, quite spectacularly” as it landed in the Pacific.
Monday’s mission was originally expected to see Starship circle Earth six times over about ten hours. SpaceX later cut the flight short, saying the spacecraft would instead reenter after around three hours and target a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii.
All 13 previous Starship flights had followed deliberately suborbital paths that would naturally bring the spacecraft back into the atmosphere. The Starship was expected to make six full laps of Earth over about 10 hours and perform a controlled splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile.
However, the starship encountered a technical issue on ascent, forcing mission control to cancel the planned orbits and instead bringing the craft back to earth some 3 hours after mission launch, in a Pacific splashdown that triggered an explosion.
SpaceX encountered major problems during the previous test mission in late July, with the booster suffering ice-related engine issues during its return, with only eight of 13 planned engines reigniting for its landing burn, resulting in a hard splashdown.
Reaching stable orbit marks a fundamental step for SpaceX because Starship is no longer simply following a high-speed arc that inevitably ends with reentry. Once in orbit, the spacecraft can remain circling Earth, which is essential to SpaceX’s plans to use Starship for large-scale satellite launches and eventually missions beyond Earth orbit.
SpaceX says future Starship missions could carry up to 60 V3 satellites and add more than 20 times as much capacity to the Starlink network in a single launch as current Falcon 9 missions.
The satellites are expected to reinforce the Starlink global network, which has been actively used by Ukraine in its conflict with Russia for piloting drones, targeting artillery, and maintaining battlefield connectivity.