SpaceX’s Starship rocket lifts off for 13th test flight

SpaceX’s Starship rocket took off from Texas in the company’s 13th flight test to demonstrate a range of onboard capabilities, including the rocket’s first suborbital deployment of new Starlink satellites.

The 120-meter-tall Starship rocket system launched from SpaceX’s Starbase corporate town at 6:50pm on Friday, with the Super Heavy first-stage booster sending Starship’s upper stage into a suborbital orbit.

The hour-long mission will end with Starship re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and crashing into the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX said the Super Heavy booster returned to Earth as Starship approached 16,400 mph in space 10 minutes into its flight, impacting the Gulf of Mexico harder than expected, though it had restarted more engines during an earlier test flight from its failed return in May.

The Starship test flight was SpaceX’s 13th flight since 2023.

It includes a new version of the rocket that is vital to the company’s plans to expand Starlink, land humans on the moon for NASA and eventually put thousands of AI-processing satellites into orbit.