SpaceX Starship Lost on Return to Earth after Completing Most of Test Flight

SpaceX's next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket lifts off on its third launch from the company's Boca Chica launchpad on an uncrewed test flight, near Brownsville, Texas, US March 14, 2024. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

SpaceX's Starship rocket, designed to eventually send astronauts to the moon and beyond, completed nearly an entire test flight to space on its third try on Thursday but was destroyed during its return to Earth after making it farther than ever before.
During a live webcast of the flight, SpaceX commentators said mission control lost communications with the spacecraft during its atmospheric re-entry at hypersonic speed. The vehicle was nearing a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean about an hour after launch from south Texas.
A few minutes later, SpaceX confirmed that the spacecraft had been "lost," presumably either burning up or coming apart during re-entry or crashing into the sea, Reuters reported.
For reasons that were left unclear, SpaceX opted to skip one of the test flight's core objectives - an attempt to re-ignite one of Starship's Raptor engines while it coasted in a shallow orbit. That milestone is considered key to its future success.
Still, completion of many of Starship's intended flight objectives represented a milestone in the development of a spacecraft crucial to the growing satellite launch business of SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, and NASA's moon program.
NASA chief Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on what he called "a successful test flight" in a statement posted on social media platform X. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell wrote in an X post the test marked an "incredible day."
The two-stage spacecraft, consisting of the Starship cruise vessel mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, blasted off from the company's Starbase launch site near Boca Chica Village on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The upper-stage Starship reached peak altitudes of 145 miles (234 km).
The spacecraft far exceeded its two past performances, both of which were cut short by explosions minutes after launch. The company had acknowledged in advance a high probability that its latest flight might similarly end with the spacecraft's demise before the mission profile was finished.
SpaceX's engineering culture, considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industry's more established players, is built on a flight-testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure, then fine-tunes improvements through frequent repetition.