Spacecraft Launch – Latest: Massive test of Mars-bound spacecraft launches towards world’s largest rocket

SpaceX has begun broadcasting a live stream of today’s Starship launch experiment.

SpaceX has just confirmed that Starship did not survive atmospheric reentry.

SpaceX President Elon Musk congratulated the team in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter).

“SpaceX has come a long way,” he wrote, sharing a photo of the company founded in 2002 along with a video of today’s launch.

You can watch Starship once again take off from the launch pad at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, earlier today.

As the Starship re-enters Earth’s atmosphere, its onboard cameras provide some incredible views.

It reaches temperatures of 1,400 degrees Celsius upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, and we don’t even know how the camera survives that temperature.

First, the flap will start to get red and hot.

We then see a plasma blanket enveloping the spacecraft.

We have exited the coastal phase and will soon enter the reentry phase.

For the past 20 minutes, Starship has been performing a number of demonstrations related to its overall mission of testing procedures and collecting data.

Thanks to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet, we were able to watch stunning HD views of the spacecraft orbiting Earth, but the signal is expected to be lost during atmospheric reentry.

If you just joined, you can watch a replay of Liftoff here.

I can hear the cheers of SpaceX staff in the background. It was an impressive sight, with SpaceX livestream commentators calling it a “phenomenal test.”

The spaceship is completing its goals while sailing around the planet. The latest is a hatch opening that will one day be used to carry satellites into orbit.

It will be another 40 minutes before we see any significant movement from the rocket, and the estimated time of atmospheric re-entry is T+50 minutes.

“We’re further away than we’ve ever been,” a SpaceX commentator said on a livestream.

“Sure, we lost a booster…but lo and behold, it’s a spaceship. We have a lot of ambitious goals in the next hour. We’re going to learn as much as we can.”

The super heavy booster appears to have been lost shortly after it was scheduled to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico.

The upper stage is currently continuing its planned flight path.