SpaceX conducted a new test flight of its super-heavy rocket Starship and, for the first time in history, placed a test payload—eight experimental satellites—into orbit, The Washington Times reported. After more than an hour in space, the vehicle splashed down in the Indian Ocean as planned.

Starship lifted off from the Starbase facility in South Texas shortly after 6:30 p.m. local time. This was the tenth test of the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, which SpaceX and NASA intend to use to return astronauts to the Moon. The U.S. space agency has already ordered two Starship vehicles for lunar surface landing missions later this decade, while the ultimate goal of SpaceX founder Elon Musk remains Mars. The demonstration flight was uncrewed.

The test also included the successful return of the Super Heavy booster, which splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean after performing a deceleration maneuver with its engines firing. Starship itself continued its flight around Earth, passing from daylight in Texas through night and back into day before the planned splashdown. Moments before entering the water, its engines reignited, flipping the vehicle so that it entered the ocean upright, nose cone facing upward.

The success follows a series of failed attempts. In January and March, test flights ended minutes after liftoff, scattering debris into the ocean. The ninth attempt in May ended in loss of control and disintegration of the vehicle. Following these setbacks, SpaceX redesigned the Super Heavy booster, adding larger and stronger stabilizing fins for greater resilience, the company said in a post on social media platform X. The first Starship test flight in 2023 ended in an explosion just minutes after launch.

The first batch of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites was placed into orbit back in 2019 with a Falcon rocket launched from Cape Canaveral. | BGNES