What Makes SpaceX’s 5th Starship Test Flight Such a Historic Milestone?

In an impressive feat of engineering, Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully retrieved the booster of a Starship prototype on the land for the first time during a test flight on Sunday (Oct. 13). The test was Starship’s fifth experimental flight and marked a major milestone for SpaceX’s dreams of eventually creating a fully reusable rocket system capable of sending humans and cargo to the Moon and Mars.

Standing at nearly 400 feet tall, Starship is the world’s tallest and most powerful rocket. It consists of an upper-stage Starship capsule, designed to transport humans and cargo in the future, and a bottom stage known as the Super Heavy booster. Sunday’s test launch lifted off at 8:25 a.m. ET from Boca Chica, Texas, with the booster’s 33 engines thrusting Starship towards orbit. The two stages of the spacecraft completed a successful separation after the upper-stage capsule ignited its own six engines, with the Super Heavy booster managing to gradually descend back into its launch tower seven minutes after takeoff.

“That looked like magic,” said Dan Huot, SpaceX’s communications manager, on a livestream of the flight test after the booster was safely secured by the launch pad tower’s “chopstick” mechanical arms. The upper-stage capsule, meanwhile, successfully traveled halfway around Earth before reentering the atmosphere and executing a planned landing in the Indian Ocean after more than an hour of flight.

“The world witnessed what the future will look like when Starship starts carrying crew and cargo to destinations on Earth, the Moon, Mars and beyond,” said SpaceX in a statement. Musk hopes to eventually achieve a returned control for Starship’s upper capsule as well, which would result in a rapid reusable rocket and represent a major opportunity to bring down the price of space travel.

SpaceX’s latest accomplishment follows four previous Starship test launches that have each brought new revelations:

• June 6, 2024: The Super Heavy booster returned in one piece for the first time after it landed in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, while the upper-stage Starship capsule achieved a soft landing in the Indian Ocean. The test lasted just over one hour.
• March 14, 2024: During this 48-minute test flight, the Starship reached orbital velocity for the first time. The launch also allowed SpaceX to perform a number of tests for the first time, including moving fuel from one tank to another within the upper-stage capsule and opening and closing payload doors that will one day deploy satellites.
• November 18, 2023: While SpaceX’s second Starship test was cut short minutes after takeoff but achieved a longer flight time than the company’s inaugural launch earlier in 2023. Despite an initially successful launch that sent the Starship 90 miles above ground, the spacecraft’s booster exploded in midair shortly after separating from the upper-stage capsule. The test ended after eight minutes when SpaceX lost contact with the upper stage, which was destroyed when an automated flight termination command was triggered.
• April 20, 2023: This was SpaceX’s first attempt to bring Starship to orbital altitude. A prototype initially climbed smoothly, but, a few minutes into the mission, the rocket experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” where the Super Heavy booster failed to separate from the upper-stage capsule, causing the mission to end prematurely and end after nearly four minutes.

Achieving rapid reusability is a pivotal part of SpaceX’s $4 billion contracts with NASA, which plans to use Starship for two upcoming crewed Moon landings as part of the Artemis program. Musk is also relying on the Starship system to complete his dreams of sending people to Mars in the next decade and colonizing the planet to ensure the long-term survival of the human species.

In light of SpaceX’s successful fifth test, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated the aerospace company in a post on the Musk-owned X. “As we prepare to go back to the Moon under Artemis, continued testing will prepare us for the bold missions that lie ahead—including to the South Pole region of the Moon and then on to Mars,” he said.

Earlier this month, Musk said Starship’s initial uncrewed flights to Mars will take place as soon as 2026, with crewed flights to follow in 2028 and 2029 if all goes well. In an X post yesterday (Oct. 14), the billionaire said Starship must eventually operate 1,000 times better than existing systems for this goal to be met. “Especially after yesterday’s booster catch and precise ocean landing of the ship, I am now convinced that it can work,” said Musk.