Starship intact after test flight, deployed 20 Starlink satellites into suborbital space before controlled reentry and burnup as planned. This marks significant progress; previous 12 tests ended with explosions, breakups, or failures at splashdown, demonstrating improved rocket reliability.
SpaceX's Starship completes 13th test flight, first since public listing
Starship is intact, floating in the ocean and transmitting telemetry
Mark
Why does a test flight that just drops satellites into the ocean and lets them burn up count as a success?
Mimi
Because for the first time, Starship completed the entire sequence without catastrophic failure. The satellites were always meant to burn up—that was the plan. What matters is that the rocket stayed intact, the deployment worked, and they got the data they needed.
Mark
But the previous 12 flights failed. What changed?
Mimi
Each failure taught them something. You don't go from explosions to a clean splashdown without learning from every piece of wreckage. The engineering got better, the systems got more reliable, the margins got wider.
Mark
Why does this matter now, specifically, after the IPO?
Mimi
Because SpaceX just asked the public to trust them with billions of dollars. A successful test right after going public is a signal that the company can deliver on what it's promised. It's not just engineering—it's credibility.
Mark
What's the real goal here? Why deploy satellites just to burn them up?
Mimi
To test the deployment mechanism under real conditions and gather data on how the satellites perform before they reach orbit. It's a dress rehearsal. And it's also practice for the actual Starlink V3 launches they want to do by year's end.
Mark
So this is just the beginning?
Mimi
Exactly. This is proof of concept. The real test is whether they can do this reliably, repeatedly, and affordably. That's what determines whether Starlink reaches remote areas and whether Starship becomes the workhorse rocket they're betting it will be.
Il Polso
- Starship completed its 13th test flight on Friday, first since SpaceX's June IPO
- The 122-meter-tall rocket deployed 20 Starlink satellites into suborbital space before controlled burnup
- Previous 12 test flights ended in explosions, breakups, or splashdown failures
- SpaceX plans to use Starship for Starlink V3 satellite expansion by end of 2026
Starship intact after test flight, deployed 20 Starlink satellites into suborbital space before controlled reentry and burnup as planned. This marks significant progress; previous 12 tests ended with explosions, breakups, or failures at splashdown, demonstrating improved rocket reliability.
SpaceX's Starship megarocket completed its 13th test flight, first since the company's June IPO, successfully splashing down in the Indian Ocean while deploying Starlink satellites.
SpaceX's Starship megarocket came down intact in the Indian Ocean on Friday, marking a clean completion of its 13th test flight and the first since Elon Musk took the company public on Wall Street in June. The moment arrived as a relief to SpaceX employees gathered at the company's headquarters in Starbase, Texas, watching the live feed. After months of tests that ended in explosions, breakups, or fiery failures at splashdown, seeing the 122-meter-tall rocket emerge from the ocean still whole and transmitting data felt like a turning point.
The test itself unfolded over roughly an hour. Starship deployed 20 Starlink satellites into suborbital space, where they briefly made contact with SpaceX's existing constellation of around 10,000 orbiting satellites before reentering the atmosphere and burning up exactly as planned. Elon Musk announced the success on X with characteristic directness: "Starship is intact, floating in the ocean and transmitting telemetry!" The controlled destruction of the test satellites was not a failure but a feature—a way to gather the data SpaceX needs to refine its operations.
What made this flight significant was not just the successful landing but what it represented about the rocket's evolution. The previous 12 test flights had all ended badly in one way or another. Starship had ignited in flames, exploded at splashdown, broken apart mid-flight. Each failure had taught SpaceX something, but they were failures nonetheless. This time, the rocket did what it was supposed to do, which in the context of hypersonic spaceflight is no small thing.
The satellite deployment itself served a larger purpose. SpaceX is working to expand its Starlink internet service, which aims to bring connectivity to remote regions where traditional cellular networks do not reach. The company has set an ambitious target: by the end of 2026, it plans to use Starship to begin launching the next generation of Starlink satellites, known as V3. These newer satellites are designed to provide better coverage and faster speeds than the current fleet.
The timing of this successful test, coming just weeks after SpaceX's initial public offering, carries weight beyond the technical achievement. Public markets had bet on the company's ability to execute on its vision. A string of explosive test failures would have weighed on investor confidence. A clean splashdown, a successful satellite deployment, and intact telemetry transmission sent a different message: the engineering is working, the iteration is paying off, and the path forward is becoming clearer. What SpaceX does with Starship over the next year—whether it can reliably launch, land, and reuse the rocket at scale—will determine whether that bet was sound.
Citazioni salienti
Starship is intact, floating in the ocean and transmitting telemetry— Elon Musk, on X
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