SpaceX’s Starship rocket suffers alarming mid-flight scare on first attempt to reach orbit

SpaceX’s megarocket experienced a mid-flight scare that nearly ended its historic orbital launch Monday morning.

The uncrewed 40-story-tall vehicle, consisting of a ​Super Heavy booster rocket topped by the main ⁠upper-stage Starship vessel, thundered off its launch pad ​at around 8.46am ET from SpaceX’s Starbase complex along ​the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville. 

The mission aimed at putting the first Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket, into orbit. However, one of the spacecraft’s Raptor 3 engines unexpectedly shut down about 15 minutes after launch, leaving the ground team to decide whether to press ahead.

About 20 minutes into the flight, mission control gave the go-ahead to attempt orbit, drawing cheers across Starbase, and about five minutes later, Starship reached the target.

The flight is expected to see Starship complete six full laps of Earth over about 10 hours. 

Monday’s test is set to end with Starship landing in the Pacific near Chile. SpaceX ultimately hopes to bring the spacecraft home and fly it again.

After 13 test flights that never reached orbit, SpaceX is attempting to send Starship around Earth for the first time and bring it safely back down. 

Success would strengthen confidence that a modified version can be ready for NASA’s planned Artemis moon landing in 2028. 

At two minutes and 34 seconds into the flight, Starship executed a successful hot stage to separate from the Super Heavy Booster 21, which completed a landing burn above its target splashdown in the Gulf.

At about 9am ET, the rocket completed the engine burn that carried it into space, despite one of its Raptor 3 engines shutting down early. 

The spacecraft compensated, while SpaceX engineers assessed the issue and weighed whether to continue into orbit. 

Despite the early engine shutdown, controllers cleared Starship to make the burn needed to enter orbit. 

About eight and a half minutes after the burn, a dispenser in the rocket’s nose began releasing 26 third-generation Starlink satellites, each with 10 times the capacity of its predecessor.

As of 9.54am, Starship had deployed its payload of Starlinks. 

Engineers plan to monitor Starship as it circles Earth six times before a single-engine burn would take it out of orbit, about eight hours and 52 minutes after launch.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman congratulated SpaceX on the successful launch, saying on X: ‘Gorgeous launch, getting Ship to orbit and managing every step in a safe, responsible, and especially inspirational way.

‘NASA, along with the rest of the interested public, is excited to help where we can and for Starship missions to become routine!’ 

Starship is orbiting Earth under a flight plan that calls for regular checks of the spacecraft’s condition, allowing controllers to decide whether to let the mission continue or bring it home early.

If a problem arises, SpaceX can fire an engine to take Starship out of orbit ahead of schedule. 

The checks are meant to reduce the risk of losing control of the spacecraft and leaving it in orbit, where it could threaten active satellites

Test flight 14, coming three months after SpaceX’s high-profile stock market debut, aims to accelerate development of the largest and most powerful rocket ever designed.

After several years of development and testing in Texas, SpaceX began flying Starship in its full configuration in 2023 and has since made numerous modifications through the successes and failures of successive tests.

But enormous technical challenges remain before Starship, which Musk wants to make fully reusable, can conduct commercial flights, deploy data centers in orbit or reach the Moon or the Red Planet.

With this new test, SpaceX hopes to usher in an ‘exciting new phase’ of development that will include, among other things, tests of refueling the rocket in orbit.