SpaceX launched the most powerful version of its Starship mega-rocket ever built on Friday in a test flight that covered roughly half the circumference of the Earth before culminating in a controlled impact in the Indian Ocean, two days after the company published its landmark IPO filing targeting a NASDAQ listing under the ticker SPCX.
The third-generation Starship, designated V3 and standing 408 feet tall when fully stacked on its Super Heavy booster, blasted off from a brand-new launch pad at Starbase near Brownsville, Texas after a scrubbed attempt the previous evening due to last-minute pad issues.
The vehicle carried 20 mock Starlink satellites as its test payload, which were released midway through the hour-long spaceflight as the spacecraft traced a trajectory stretching from Texas across the Atlantic and into the Indian Ocean before impact.
The test was not without complications, with SpaceX confirming some engine trouble during the flight, though the vehicle reached its intended destination despite the issue and the company described the outcome as broadly successful.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman flew to Starbase personally to witness the launch, describing Starship as now one step closer to the moon and underscoring the space agency’s stake in the rocket’s development as the planned lunar lander for the Artemis IV mission.
Elon Musk called it an epic launch and landing in a post on X, telling his team they had scored a goal for humanity, despite the spacecraft’s fiery terminal impact being consistent with the test profile rather than a landing demonstration.
The V3 Starship features new engines designed to generate approximately 18 million pounds of thrust, making it substantially more powerful than prior iterations and better suited to the orbital refuelling missions that NASA requires before Starship can attempt a crewed lunar surface landing.
SpaceX’s IPO prospectus, filed two days before the launch, explicitly states that the company’s growth strategy depends on its ability to increase launch cadence and payload capacity, making the successful test a commercially significant development immediately ahead of the public offering process.
NASA is paying SpaceX billions of dollars to develop Starship as the Human Landing System for the Artemis programme, which aims to return American astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972, with Artemis IV currently targeted for early 2028.
Musk announced earlier this year that SpaceX has shifted its stated priority from Mars colonisation toward building what he described as a self-growing city on the moon, a significant departure from over two decades of Mars-centric public rhetoric from the world’s most prominent space entrepreneur.
