SpaceX launched its massive Starship rocket on a key test flight on Friday, lifting off from its South Texas launch facility at 4:47 p.m. local time, or 5:47 p.m. ET. Test Flight 15 was the most ambitious Starship mission to date and the first time Elon Musk's company attempted to catch both the booster and the upper stage, or spacecraft portion, of the rocket. The attempt to recover both stages was not successful.
SpaceX had to abort its plan to catch and reuse the booster, diverting it instead to splash into the Gulf of Mexico, where it burst into flames. The upper stage continued its trajectory into orbit after the booster recovery failed, and the rocket is expected to fly around the Earth fourteen times in total. If the upper stage succeeds, SpaceX plans to land it back at its Starbase facility on Saturday. The company had obtained authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration earlier on Friday.S1
Hours after the launch, the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop after reporting communication problems affecting "multiple" air traffic control centers. An FAA spokesperson told CNBC that the stoppage did not affect the SpaceX license.S1
Starship is central to SpaceX's ambitions to lift cargo and people to the surface of the Moon and Mars. In the nearer term, the company needs to send more satellites into orbit to expand its Starlink satellite internet service, which is currently its profit center. The constellation already includes over 11,000 active satellites in low Earth orbit. A single Starship can carry up to 60 Starlink v3 satellites, about 20 times the capacity of earlier Falcon 9 rockets. The previous Starship test released 26 v3 satellites, and the Friday flight released another 26, with the stated goal of "Starlink becoming 51% of the internet," SpaceX said in a post on X.S1
William Blair analysts wrote in a note that SpaceX is "likely a full decade ahead of peers" on launches, adding that even an unsuccessful catch would delay progress by only a few months and would not be very consequential. Separately, SpaceX faces fresh criticism over restrictions on its Starshield military-tier satellite internet service in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week that his military had again experienced limits on Starshield without warning, harming its ability to defend against Russia's ongoing aerial attacks. Similar limits were temporarily imposed last month, and some U.S. senators have condemned the restrictions and urged Congress to investigate SpaceX.S1
