SpaceX's Starship Aces Splashdown In Gulf Of Mexico, Crashes Where Elon Musk Planned It: WATCH
SpaceX’s mighty Starship rocket completed another high-stakes test flight on Monday, successfully traveling halfway around the world before splashing down in the Indian Ocean. The mission marked another milestone for the world’s most powerful rocket as engineers push toward sending humans back to the Moon, and eventually to Mars.
The towering 403-foot Starship roared to life from SpaceX’s Starbase in South Texas, lighting up the evening sky with its massive engines. Moments later, its booster separated cleanly and re-entered the Gulf of Mexico as planned.
The spacecraft continued its flight, briefly skimming the edge of space before descending over the Indian Ocean. According to SpaceX, no part of the vehicle was recovered, Associated Press reported.
“Hey, welcome back to Earth, Starship,” SpaceX commentator Dan Huot said to cheers erupting from mission control. “What a day.”
This was the eleventh full-scale test of Starship, which is a fully reusable launch system that SpaceX founder Elon Musk envisions as a ticket to Mars for humans. For NASA, however, the rocket holds a more immediate purpose, which is to land astronauts on the Moon’s surface later this decade. The agency’s Artemis program depends on Starship to ferry crews from lunar orbit down to the surface and return them safely.
Breaking from his usual routine, Musk revealed he stepped outside to witness the liftoff directly for the first time, calling it “much more visceral.”
August’s previous test flight had already marked a turning point after numerous fiery failures, and this latest mission built upon that success. Engineers added more maneuvers to fine-tune the spacecraft’s control and test systems designed to prepare for future landings at Starbase. The rocket also released a set of eight mock satellites simulating SpaceX’s Starlink payloads, with the entire mission wrapping up just over an hour after launch.
NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, congratulated SpaceX on social media, calling the flight “another major step toward landing Americans on the moon’s south pole.”
SpaceX is now working to upgrade its Cape Canaveral facilities in Florida to handle Starship operations. The company continues to rely on its smaller Falcon rockets for astronaut and cargo transportation to the International Space Station, but Starship, if fully realised, promises to redefine the future of space travel.
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