Starship Flight Ends Early After Reaching Orbit

SpaceX launched its enormous Starship into orbit for the first time Monday and successfully delivered the most advanced Starlinks yet, but cut the flight short to ensure safety. The spacecraft reentered over the Pacific and splashed down north of Hawaii three hours after blasting off from Texas. The company had been aiming for a 10-hour flight, spanning six full laps around Earth, to prove its readiness for NASA's Artemis moon program, the AP reports. Starship tipped over and erupted in flames upon splashdown, a dramatic end to the mission.

Starship almost didn't make it to orbit when one of its engines shut down too soon. But with everything else working well and the bad engine no longer needed, flight controllers decided after several tense minutes to proceed as planned. "Starship is orbital," Mission Control announced to cheers. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman congratulated SpaceX on reaching orbit and "managing every step in a safe, responsible and especially inspirational way."

• Elon Musk's showpiece rocket—the biggest and most powerful ever built—carried 26 of the latest Starlink satellites to join the 11,000 older models already providing internet service. They popped out of the spacecraft one by one, drawing more cheers from the SpaceX crowds looking on from the launch site in Starbase, Texas. The decision to end the flight early came soon afterward. No reason was provided.

• It was Starship's 14th full-scale launch from Texas' southern tip in three years. The earlier test flights ventured no farther than the Indian Ocean halfway around the world, often crashing in flames and briefly skimming space.
• This time, SpaceX was intent on circling the globe from an altitude of 170 miles—not just once but six times over almost 10 hours, ending with a Pacific splashdown near Chile. While Starship achieved the proper orbit, zipping along at 17,500 mph, flight controllers opted to play it safe and bring it back several hours sooner, after just a couple of laps.
• SpaceX wants to ensure that everything works before flying Starship back to Starbase. If the spacecraft breaks apart over land and rains debris onto people, "our popularity would diminish very rapidly," Musk said at a business summit earlier this month. "That's why we're being extremely cautious here."
• Depending on the findings from Monday's orbital debut, the next Starship could return to the launch pad with giant mechanical arms grabbing the hovering spacecraft. If the catch works—Musk gives it even or slightly better odds—then SpaceX will refly the spacecraft by year's end or early next year.