According to SpaceX, the Starship Mars rocket achieved "every major objective" during its spectacular Flight 10 test launch

 

SpaceX reports the Starship megarocket successfully completed its most recent launch test.

The largest and most potent rocket ever constructed, Starship, began its tenth test flight Tuesday, August 26, at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT) from SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas.

Flight 10 was ambitious and full of events. "Taking a significant step forward in developing the world’s first fully reusable launch vehicle," SpaceX noted in a post-flight update on Tuesday night, demonstrating that Starship met the test. "Every major objective was met, providing critical data to inform designs of the next generation Starship and Super Heavy."

The Super Heavy booster and the Starship (or just Ship) upper stage make up Starship, which is intended to be completely and quickly reusable, as that update points out.

SpaceX believes that feature, together with the rocket's unmatched power, would enable humans to colonize Mars, a long-held ambition of CEO and company founder Elon Musk.

But lately, things had been a little rough for Starship. SpaceX lost the upper stage too soon on its last three test missions, which took up in January, March, and May of this year. Ship detonated less than ten minutes after liftoff on the January and March flights (Flights 7 and 8), and it disintegrated upon reentering Earth's atmosphere on the May launch (Flight 9).

Additionally, SpaceX had to prepare a different spacecraft for the trip after another ship was destroyed in a test-stand explosion in June as it was being prepared for Flight 10.

However, Ship had a good Tuesday. Sixty-six minutes after launch, the vehicle made a soft, controlled splashdown in the target zone in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia, having made it to space and back undamaged. (Well, largely undamaged; certain sections of the ship's base were freed by the demands of reentry. Additionally, the car exploded soon after it reached the sea, although that was to be expected.)

On Flight 10, SpaceX had also loaded the deck against Ship, removing part of its heat-shield panels for study.

"Starship was able to gather data on the performance of its heat shield and structure as it was intentionally stressed to push the envelope on vehicle capabilities," SpaceX stated in its post-flight statement.

Prior to splashdown, the ship achieved a number of significant milestones. It was the first Starship flight to successfully deliver payloads, which were eight dummy copies of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites.

Furthermore, the upper stage demonstrated a capacity that will be necessary on operational flights by momentarily re-igniting one of its engines in orbit. This was only the second time this had been done on a Starship mission, and that was on Flight 10.