Friday saw SpaceX pull off the historic 12th test flight of its Starship rocket system, and in doing so, unveil its much-anticipated Version 3 (V3) architecture in glorious action for the very first time. The giant 407-foot-tall megarocket embarked on a mission to push the boundaries of rapid reusability and hardware reduction from the newly finished Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas. The spacecraft of the next generation showed remarkable resilience in the face of multiple in-flight anomalies, including an engine shutdown early in the ascent that ultimately resulted in an in-space Raptor relight that was aborted. Starship’s upper stage, Ship 39, successfully deployed 22 dummy Starlink satellites on a new deployment mechanism, including special camera-equipped simulators that beamed back incredible, never-before-seen live views from space of the vehicle’s heat shield.
The V3 hardware was subjected to rigorous tests by engineers, including hypersonic flap stress tests and a dynamic banking maneuver designed to simulate future return-to-launch-site trajectories, before the upper stage started its high-stakes atmospheric reentry over the Indian Ocean. After an off-nominal boostback burn, the first-stage Super Heavy booster had a turbulent descent and an uncontrolled crash in the Gulf of Mexico, but the Starship upper stage prevailed. The vehicle survived peak atmospheric heating with its thermal protection system intact, performed a precise flip maneuver, and fired its remaining engines for a terminal landing burn. The historic mission played out to perfection: a precise, nominal water landing west of Australia, and then a planned, dramatic fireball explosion that elicited massive cheers throughout SpaceX headquarters, cementing a monumental leap forward for NASA’s lead Artemis lunar lander contender.