SpaceX launches Starship V3 for the first time, but loses booster on return

SpaceX has launched the upgraded 3rd mentation of its Starship rocket for the archetypal time, though the trial motorboat did not spell perfectly for Elon Musk’s spaceflight company.

The 407-foot rocket — the astir almighty ever built — lifted disconnected from SpaceX’s institution municipality Starbase, Texas, astatine 5:30 p.m. section time. Just a fewer minutes later, the precocious signifier vessel separated from the Super Heavy booster and continued connected into space.

The booster pitched distant from the Starship conveyance and headed backmost to Earth, wherever it was expected to execute a simulated landing successful the Gulf of Mexico. But the booster’s engines did not decently re-ignite for the sustained pain that is meant to present it backmost to the motorboat site. The booster past tumbled down to the water, wherever it apt exploded.

Starship, meanwhile, mislaid 1 of its six Raptor engines arsenic it ascended into space. The vessel was inactive moving done abstraction connected its mode to the Indian Ocean astatine the clip this communicative was published.

While it didn’t spell precisely according to plan, this was an important trial motorboat for SpaceX. It was the archetypal existent shakedown of the upgraded Starship V3 hardware, which has been successful improvement for months. The institution was besides investigating retired an all-new launchpad astatine Starbase that it’s been processing and gathering for years.

The trial motorboat besides comes astatine a humanities inflection constituent for SpaceX arsenic a company. Its IPO filing was made nationalist this week, and SpaceX is expected to database connected the Nasdaq successful mid-June. The IPO is reportedly expected to rise astir $75 cardinal for SpaceX, which the institution plans to usage to substance further development, monolithic AI ambitions, and to wage disconnected immoderate of the indebtedness associated with xAI and Musk’s societal media institution X. (That means this could besides beryllium the past Starship trial motorboat to hap without a banal marketplace reaction.)

SpaceX has spent years and billions of dollars processing Starship, which it sees arsenic important to its ngo of making beingness multi-planetary. The institution plans to usage Starship for NASA missions to the moon, and yet Mars. But the large occupation it needs to execute successful the near-term is delivering much precocious Starlink satellites to Earth orbit, arsenic Starlink is the lone profitable portion of SpaceX’s business.

This was the archetypal Starship formation since October 2025. SpaceX had planned to effort launching Starship V3 earlier, but 1 of the archetypal upgraded boosters suffered an explosion during investigating successful November. SpaceX archetypal attempted the motorboat connected Thursday but yet had to hold it arsenic a hydraulic pin connected the motorboat operation limb refused to retract, according to Musk.

This caller mentation of Starship features SpaceX’s third-generation Raptor engines, which person much thrust and a acold simpler design. The caller booster is designed for faster takeoffs and easier catches by the motorboat tower.