SpaceX conducted the first test flight of the upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster on Friday, with largely positive results.
The powerful rocket, powered by 33 methane-fueled main engines, lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase launch pad in South Texas at 5:30 p.m. (6:30 p.m. EDT; 10:30 p.m. UTC) on Friday. Within seconds, the 408-foot-tall (124-meter) missile, the largest ever built, cleared the launch tower and headed east over the Gulf of Mexico.
A little over an hour later, the Starship blasted off to its target in the Indian Ocean to complete the maiden flight of the latest version of SpaceX’s stainless steel mega-rocket. Starship V3 fared better in its debut First flights of Starship V1 and V2 in 2023 and 2025. Both past versions of the Starship broke up during launch on their first flights.
SpaceX officials appeared pleased with the Starship V3’s performance on Friday. Company founder and CEO Elon Musk congratulated his engineers in a post on X: “Congratulations to the SpaceX team on the launch and landing of the epic first Starship V3! You’ve scored a goal for humanity.”
“Congratulations and a big thank you to the SpaceX team for always delivering,” SpaceX second-in-command Gwynne Shotwell wrote in the X post. “This was an incredible first flight of an all-new vehicle. Our collective future flying among the stars just got closer.”
NASA leaders are counting on SpaceX to power Starship manned lunar landerthey watched the launch closely. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was in Texas to witness the launch in person. He praised SpaceX for “one hell of a V3 Starship launch.”
It was the 12th test flight of the Starship it’s been a long time coming. The final Starship test flight departed last October. The gap of more than seven months was the longest interval between Starship flights since the program’s first full-scale launch in April 2023. SpaceX used the time to complete construction and activation of the second launch pad at Starbase while engineers steered Starship V3 through ground tests. had its share of setbacks.
