SpaceX Starship lost on return to Earth after completing most of test flight

SpaceX's Starship rocket, designed to eventually send astronauts to the moon and beyond, completed nearly an entire test flight on its third try on Thursday, making it much farther than before with a cruise through low orbit before being destroyed during a return to Earth, the company said.

During a live webcast of the flight, SpaceX commentators said mission control lost communications with the spacecraft during its atmospheric re-entry. The vehicle was nearing a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean about an hour after launch.

A few minutes later, SpaceX confirmed that the spacecraft had been lost, presumably either burning up or coming apart during re-entry or crashing into the sea.

Still, completion of most of the intended hour-plus test flight trajectory of Starship marked a major milestone in the development of a spacecraft crucial to Elon Musk's satellite launch business and NASA's moon program.

NASA chief Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on what he called "a successful test flight" in a statement posted on the social media platform X.

The two-stage spacecraft, consisting of the Starship cruise vessel mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, blasted off from the Elon Musk-owned company's Starbase launch site near Boca Chica Village on the south Texas Gulf Coast.

During its flight, Starship reached peak altitudes of 145 miles (234 km), the company said.

SpaceX engineers had hoped to improve on the Starship's two past performances, which both ended in explosions minutes after launch. 

However, the company had acknowledged in advance a high probability that its latest flight might similarly end with the spacecraft's destruction before the planned mission profile was finished.





Reuters