SpaceX Starship rocket lost in second test flight

Our live coverage has wrapped up for the day. Read more here about today’s SpaceX launch.

The uncrewed Starship spacecraft launched aboard the most powerful rocket ever built on Saturday morning, but both were lost shortly after liftoff.

The Super Heavy rocket booster ignited its 33 massive engines and Starship experienced a safe liftoff. SpaceX tried “hot staging” for the first time, essentially a step in which the spacecraft separated from the rocket booster by blunt force trauma.

After hot staging, the rocket booster exploded in a fireball over the Gulf of Mexico. Starship initially continued on just fine before SpaceX lost the spacecraft’s signal and triggered the system’s software to terminate the flight so it didn’t veer off course.

Starship was intended to fly nearly a lap around the planet before returning to Earth, but data from this second test flight will be used to determine SpaceX’s next steps in making humanity “multiplanetary.”

Around 10 minutes into the uncrewed test flight, SpaceX lost contact with Starship, and so far hasn’t publicly shared any potential theories as to what might have gone wrong.

In a statement issued after the launch, the company said it would review data from the mission and share updates on its website.

The FAA is also expected to begin a mishap investigation of the test, as is routine after any space mission that does not go exactly to plan. The agency said Saturday in a statement, “No injuries or public property damage have been reported,” as a result of the launch.

SpaceX’s launchpad appears to be fully intact, indicating that a new water deluge system used to dampen the jarring forces of the Super Heavy rocket’s engines during takeoff helped keep the ground facilities safe.

Cameron County — the Texas county that encompasses Starship’s launch site — opened the single road that runs out to SpaceX’s launch facility and the public beaches shortly after launch. It was a quick turnaround for the county, which left the roads closed significantly longer after the inaugural test launch in April.

One key factor at play: SpaceX acknowledged that the sheer force of Super Heavy’s engines after the April launch tore apart the launchpad. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk referred to it as a “rock tornado.”

But the new deluge system used during this launch shot nearly 360,000 gallons of water upward as the engines ignited during this morning’s launch. When CNN visited the launch site a few hours after takeoff, the stand that the rocket launched from appeared to be unharmed and there were no immediately visible signs of large debris in the area.

After separating from the Super Heavy rocket booster, the Starship spacecraft soared to an altitude of approximately 93 miles (150 kilometers) before SpaceX lost contact, according to a statement issued by the company.

For context, the US government considers 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth’s surface the edge of outer space. Internationally, the Kármán line, located 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level, is often used to mark the boundary between our planet and space — but there’s a lot of gray area.

SpaceX has a lot of rockets and a few programs that start with “Star.” To avoid confusion, here’s a quick recap of some of the things this company has built.

Let’s start with the rockets:

In recent remarks, Musk said Starship makes the Falcon 1 look like “a high school project.”

And here are some other notable “Star” references in the commercial space world:

SpaceX is OK with rockets exploding in the early stages of development.

That’s because the company uses a completely different approach to rocket design than, say, NASA. The space agency focuses on building one rocket and strenuously designing and testing it on the ground before its first flight — taking years but all but guaranteeing success on the first launch.

SpaceX, however, rapidly builds new prototypes and is willing to test them to their breaking point because there’s usually a spare nearby. During a drive by the company’s facilities on Friday — four Starship spacecraft and at least two Super Heavy boosters could be seen from public roadways.

Most of the public at today’s launch of the Starship rocket system watched from South Padre Island, which lies about 5 miles away from the launch site across the water.

But one group of hardcore fans got a bit closer to the behemoth rocket as it roared to life, sending out shockwaves of sonic booms and plumes of exhaust and dust across the landscape.

They gathered at a place aptly named Rocket Ranch — which was created for SpaceX obsessionists.

The camping site and a remote viewing location lie just up the road from the Starship’s launchpad off Boca Chica Highway, a narrow strip of asphalt that serves as the only way of trekking to and from SpaceX’s facilities in South Texas.

When CNN visited on Friday ahead of the launch, Rocket Ranch’s managing partner — Anthony Gomez — was herding dozens of campers and SpaceX fans onto a refurbished school bus.

Guests had to travel by bus from the camping ground to the viewing site on Friday night because the surrounding roads were blocked off ahead of the launch to keep people out of the area. Otherwise, the only way to access “The Outpost” is by a small pontoon boat in the Rio Grande River.

The viewing site is so close to the pad that patrons had to sign waivers.

“I voluntarily assume all risks associated with viewing rocket launches on Rocket Ranch property, including the risk of physical and emotional harm,” the waiver reads.

Overnight, the spectators made fajitas as the excitement built.

Gomez said the crowds grew rowdy as the countdown clock ticked through its final seconds, screaming “go Starship!”

The sounds of the engines “shook you to your core,” he said.

“The tears began to flow all around us,” Gomez said via text message. “Everyone seemed to embrace, as they understood what was being accomplished here, in Boca Chica. Something we all feel the world needs to see for themselves: The future of our kind takes one step closer to reaching the stars.
“This is the most beautiful thing we’ve ever seen,” he said.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licensed the Starship’s test flight today, just issued a statement:

A mishap occurred during the SpaceX Starship OFT-2 launch from Boca Chica, Texas, on Saturday, Nov. 18. The anomaly resulted in a loss of the vehicle. No injuries or public property damage have been reported.

The agency is expected to begin a mishap investigation of the launch, as is routine after any space mission that does not go exactly to plan.

It took more than four months for the FAA to complete the last mishap investigation after Starship’s test flight in April.

The Super Heavy booster — the bottommost portion of the Starship system that gives the first burst of power at liftoff — was able to ignite all 33 of its Raptor engines at liftoff.

That had not been done before. Even during ground tests, SpaceX has had a hard time getting all of those engines, clustered together at the base of the rocket, to power on consistently at the same time.

But all of the engines appeared to function as intended this time around, burning together throughout the entire duration of Super Heavy’s flight, which lasted about two and a half minutes, or until it ran out of most of its fuel.

Super Heavy then exploded as SpaceX tested out a new means of separating the rocket booster from the Starship spacecraft — but SpaceX had already achieved something big.

NASA’s chief — Bill Nelson — offered his congratulations after the Starship flight.

Jim Free — associate administrator for NASA’s exploration systems development mission directorate — also posted a note on social media saying that this test flight marked a step forward for the Starship development program.

NASA is paying SpaceX up to more than $4 billion for Starship. The space agency intends to use the spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon under its flagship Artemis program.

The first landing using a Starship vehicle is slated for as soon as December 2025. But Free has previously expressed concerns that Starship won’t be ready in time, warning the mission could slip to 2026 or NASA could be forced to design a new flight profile.

Free was recently promoted to be NASA’s associate administrator — the agency’s third highest-ranking executive. He will take over that role in December.

SpaceX did not finish the entire mission, and both the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster exploded over the ocean.

But there were some big highlights for SpaceX.

The rocket made it much further into its flight profile than during the first flight attempt in April, when Starship began tumbling tail-over-head about four minutes after liftoff. The Starship never even separated from the Super Heavy booster during that test.

This time, however, SpaceX did achieve that milestone: About two and a half minutes into flight, the Starship powered up its engines and successfully broke away using a brand new method called “hot staging.”

It marked a crucial moment for SpaceX, as hot staging was expected to be “the riskiest part of the flight,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in October.

SpaceX had already said it would consider the mission a success if Starship made it past that point. And it did.

It did not, however, go exactly as planned. The Super Heavy booster began tumbling out of control just after separation, and it exploded over the Gulf of Mexico just moments later. SpaceX had hoped to reignite the Super Heavy’s engines and guide it to a controlled landing.

Losing the booster isn’t a huge setback. Initially, Starship continued moving along just fine after breaking away from Super Heavy.

About 8 minutes after liftoff, cheers could be heard echoing throughout mission control as the Starship was approaching the end of its engine burn — putting it on a path toward Earth’s orbit.

But 9 minutes after launch — SpaceX made it clear that it lost video signal with Starship.

And about 11 and a half minutes into the flight, the company confirmed it had lost data. That indicated Starship wasn’t flying as planned.

Engineer John Insprucker, hosting SpaceX’s livestream, then confirmed SpaceX was forced to destroy Starship so it didn’t veer off course.

The company is already emphasizing that, in its view, this test was a success.

“We got so much data and that will all help us to improve for our next flight,” said Kate Tice, an engineering manager for quality systems at SpaceX, during the livestream.

In a tweet, the company said the same thing as it did after April’s short-lived test flight:

The company has been known to embrace failures and fiery mishaps in the early stages of rocket development. It’s built into the company’s engineering philosophy, which welcomes early risks during test flights in the name of learning and refining the vehicle’s design quicker than if it relied on ground tests.

The Starship system made it much further into flight than the first attempt in April, but ultimately ended in another explosion.

The rocket and spacecraft safely lifted off the pad, with the Super Heavy booster igniting all 33 of its engines. During the last attempt, multiple engines shut down prematurely.

Then, the Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft successfully separated, as the Starship lit up its engines and pushed away.

That process, however, ended up destroying the Super Heavy booster, which erupted into a ball of flames over the Gulf of Mexico. But the Starship spacecraft was able to briefly continue its journey.

A few minutes later, however, SpaceX was not able to regain a signal from the vehicle. And the company confirmed on its livestream that it was forced to trigger Starship’s self-destruct feature.

As Starship was set to enter the coast phase, SpaceX said it was unable to receive data from Starship’s second stage.

This means the spacecraft “wouldn’t be able wouldn’t be able to come back in an hour or so and possibly get ready for reentry,” according to the SpaceX live stream.

The company confirmed on its livestream that it was forced to trigger Starship’s “flight termination system” — which is essentially a self-destruct feature that SpaceX engaged to prevent the Starship from traveling off course.

SpaceX ended the livestream shortly after.

The Super Heavy booster just blew up.

It wasn’t supposed to do that. SpaceX was hoping to guide it to a controlled spalshdown in the ocean.

But the spacecraft — the crucial part — is still moving, blaring to faster speeds toward space.

The countdown clock struck zero and the Super Heavy booster attempted to light up its 33 engines, roaring to life and sending a deafening boom across the launch site.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket just hit “Max Q,” an aerospace term that refers to the point during flight at which a vehicle experiences its maximum dynamic pressure.

Put simply: It’s when the rocket is moving at very high speed, at a time when the atmosphere is still pretty thick, putting a lot of pressure on the vehicle. 

The Super Heavy rocket has expended most of its fuel, and it just separated from Starship, which was riding atop the gargantuan Super Heavy booster.

This marks a crucial moment for SpaceX.

The company was attempting a new method for separating the Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft mid-launch. Instead of using technical thrusters to push the two pieces apart, Starship ignited its own six Raptor engines — while the Super Heavy was still firing a few of its own — to forcefully push itself away.

Super Heavy is now heading back toward the ocean, where it will be discarded.

Starship is now continuing on its mission to space.

The first attempt to send Starship spaceward generated what Musk referred to as a “rock tornado” at liftoff as the sheer force of the rocket blew apart the launchpad. It spewed debris up to 20 acres outside the area that federal regulators initially expected.

And that all happened before the rocket exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.

In the hopes of avoiding a repeat, SpaceX has spent the last several months making some changes at the launchpad.

One key addition is a new water deluge system.

Essentially, it’s a massive steel plate that has holes in it, allowing water to shoot up. The “massive super strong steel shower head” — again, Musk’s words — will spray water when it’s time for liftoff in order to dampen the jarring vibrations and heat given off by Super Heavy’s monstrous engines.

The Federal Aviation Administration described the new system like this:

A maximum of approximately 358,000 gallons of potable water would be pushed from ground tanks into the steel plates and released through holes in the plating. The deluge system would apply a large amount of water to rapidly cool and create a barrier between the steel plate and rocket exhaust that will help to absorb sound energy and heat produced by the rocket engines and would allow the steel plate to be reused. It is expected that most of the water would be vaporized by the heat of the rocket engines.

SpaceX’s launchpad at Starbase — the name of the company’s sprawling facility that has popped up by the Gulf of Mexico at the southernmost tip of Texas — has some unique features.

The large metal arms that look like they’re giving the rocket a hug aren’t a typical launchpad feature. SpaceX has a unique plan for this structure, which CEO Elon Musk has dubbed “Mechazilla.”

Eventually, SpaceX hopes these arms will catch the Starship spacecraft mid-air as it flies back home from a trip to space.

That maneuver has never been tried before — but it’s not entirely unlike the method SpaceX uses to land and recover its other rockets.

The company’s Falcon 9 rocket pioneered propulsive landing: It became the first to complete a soft touchdown of its booster after a flight in April 2016.

It used its engines, a set of hardware called grid fins to steer itself, and four legs attached to the base to make a gentle landing on a seafaring platform, called a droneship.

SpaceX has since perfected the maneuver, with 230 booster landings under its belt. (And that doesn’t even count Falcon Heavy booster landings.)

The main difference for Starship is that — instead of relying on landing legs — SpaceX plans to fly the rocket booster straight into Mechazilla’s giant metal arms, catching it before it hits the ground.

SpaceX won’t attempt to land Starship or Super Heavy today. Both will instead be discarded into the ocean.

But, before it hits the water, SpaceX will attempt to test out a landing maneuver by reigniting Super Heavy’s engines.

That should happen about six minutes and 30 seconds into flight — if all goes well.

Later, the Starship spacecraft may attempt something similar, making use of a belly flop maneuver as it heads in for landing over an hour into its flight.

SpaceX is trying out something new today.

It’s called “hot staging,” which is a method for separating the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket after liftoff, when Super Heavy has burned through most of its fuel and is ready to break away.

Almost all rockets go through a process during launch called “stage separation,” in which the bottommost rocket booster diverges from the rest of the rocket or spacecraft.

When SpaceX launches its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, for example, the first-stage booster — or the bottommost portion of the rocket — breaks away from the upper part of the rocket less than three minutes into flight.

The Falcon 9 does so using “pneumatic pushers” that are housed within the rocket’s interstage. That’s the black band that can be seen around the middle of the Falcon 9.

Starship, however, won’t use pneumatic pushers. Instead, the Starship spacecraft will simply fire up its own six engines to push itself away from the Super Heavy booster.

Essentially, it’s separation by blunt force trauma.

So, Starship’s interstage has some large vents installed to direct the blow of the engines — aiming to make this method safe for the booster.

No one is quite sure whether all this will work.

Starship’s attempt at hot staging should occur two minutes and 41 seconds into the mission.

SpaceX has started its live coverage of the launch. It’s streaming on X — the website formerly known as Twitter, which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk purchased last year.

A viewing site in South Padre Island, which lies about 5 miles from the launch site is now lined with spectators. Small boats are circling the water nearby.

SpaceX has the option to hold the clock at T-40 seconds if boats don’t clear out of the exclusion zone.

With only a 20-minute launch window today, however, the pressure is on.

Ask someone in the space industry, and they’ll likely tell you we’re in the midst of a modern space race — a new incarnation of the 20th-century competition between the US and the former Soviet Union that culminated in the Apollo moon landings.

Now, “There is a new space race — this time with China,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson last year.

That’s why NASA wants to put boots back on the moon as quickly as possible.

What’s changed since the Apollo era is how NASA aims to do it: Unlike its efforts in the 20th century, the space agency is putting quite a bit of control in the hands of the private sector.

SpaceX’s Starship is just one element of NASA’s Artemis moon landing program that involves creating a spacecraft designed — and largely funded — by a corporation, rather than NASA itself. (Though the space agency is investing about $4 billion into Starship.)

So, as much as China and the United States are competing in a race to the moon, private companies within the United States are also battling it out for lucrative government contracts.

Three billionaires have generated the most buzz in the private sector’s push toward the cosmos: Elon Musk with SpaceX, Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, and Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic.

SpaceX is still the only company of the three that has sent a rocket to orbit. Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have been focused on flying tourists on brief trips to the edge of space.

But Blue Origin notably has its own lunar ambitions — and, as of this year, a NASA contract to go with them.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is no stranger to garnering widespread media attention for his statements on social media.

The billionaire, who purchased Twitter last year and has since renamed the platform X, is under fire for his behavior on the platform after he publicly endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claimed Jewish communities push “hatred against Whites.”

Even the White House weighed in.

“It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of Antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said Friday in a statement. “We condemn this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms.”

NASA deferred to the White House when reached for comment.

It’s not the first time Musk’s behavior has raised concerns within the federal government, which is a dynamic complicated by the fact that Musk’s SpaceX has billions of dollars in government contracts. NASA has paid the company nearly $12 billion to date, according to the space agency.

The Super Heavy booster is already being loaded up with all the propellant it’ll need for takeoff, and now SpaceX is moving on to the Starship spacecraft, which sits atop the booster.

The propellant includes liquid methane and superchilled liquid oxygen — or “LOX” — which serves as the oxidizer. Both are pumped into the rocket from nearby tanks.

SpaceX — and NASA — have huge goals for this rocket.

NASA wants to use Starship to carry out the final leg of the journey to put astronauts back on the moon for the first time in five decades as part of its Artemis program. The space agency gave SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract in 2021 to get the job done.

Starship is also the linchpin of SpaceX’s goal of getting humans to Mars. The company’s founding purpose is to make humans a multiplanetary species, sending them to live on other planets in case Earth becomes unsuitable for life.

That task would require a rocket that is truly massive.

“We are trying to build something that is capable of creating a permanent base on the moon and a city on Mars — that’s why it is so large,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in October.

Whether that goal is feasible — economically, technologically and politically — remains to be seen. But Musk and SpaceX have garnered a diehard fanbase rallied around the idea.

Other items on the agenda for Starship:

You may have heard Starship is the biggest rocket ever created. And it is. By a long shot.

Starship stands at nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall and packs 16.7 million pounds (7,590 tons) of force.

Let’s compare that to some of the other largest rockets ever constructed — past and present.

Starship is a gargantuan launch system, unlike anything SpaceX has built before.

It consists of two parts:

Though it can’t reach orbit without Super Heavy, Starship is the crucial part of this launch system. It’s designed to house all the cargo — whether that’s satellites or astronauts — that SpaceX would be transporting.

The spacecraft’s cargo bay is truly enormous. It has about 1,000 cubic meters (35,300 cubic feet) of space, according to recent comments from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

“It looks like a cathedral,” Musk said. “It looks absurd, frankly.”

The rocket holds millions of pounds of fuel and oxidizer. Super Heavy alone can hold up to 8 million pounds (3,700 metric tons) of propellant, while the Starship spacecraft can hold another 3 million (1,500 metric tons).

The primary fuel is methane, which SpaceX chose for several performance reasons — and because methane fuel could one day be produced on Mars.

SpaceX confirmed on its social media account Saturday morning that all systems and weather are “go” for launch.

That gives SpaceX the green light to begin loading up the rocket with propellant.

It took only about four months to prepare for a second test flight after its explosive first attempt in April.

CEO Elon Musk tweeted in September that the next Starship was already prepared for liftoff — pending regulatory approval.

That regulatory piece is key: SpaceX has been after the Federal Aviation Administration — which licenses commercial rocket launches — to work more quickly.

One SpaceX executive even brought the complaints to the Senate.

“It’s a shame when our hardware is ready to fly, and we’re not able to go fly because of regulations or review,” said William Gerstenmaier — SpaceX’s vice president for build and reliability who previously served as NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration.
“Licensing, including environmental (review), often takes longer than rocket development. This should never happen. And it’s only getting worse.”

Environmentalists, meanwhile, put a different kind of pressure on regulators. In May, a group of environmental organizations sued the FAA over SpaceX’s activities, saying the agency failed to comply with federal environmental laws or consider the local fallout from the company’s explosive testing activities.

(SpaceX and the FAA denied those claims.)

The FAA nonetheless issued a license on Wednesday for the second test flight, saying SpaceX had “met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements.”

SpaceX first attempted to launch Starship and its Super Heavy booster in April.

But the test flight didn’t get far.

Immediately it became clear not all of the Super Heavy’s engines were firing, and the rocket lifted off in an almost horizontal direction.

Then, as it began to soar out over the Gulf of Mexico, the rocket began tumbling tail-over-head — and SpaceX was forced to hit the self-destruct button, exploding the rocket so it wouldn’t pose any danger.

The sheer force of the rocket upon liftoff also left the launchpad in tatters, forcing SpaceX to rebuild the pad in a way that it hopes will better withstand the fiery blow of Super Heavy’s 33 engines.

Despite the mishap, SpaceX sought to frame the mission as a crucial learning experience. The company has long been known to embrace explosive mistakes during rocket development — aiming to learn more quickly than if it just relied on ground tests.

Starship is still in a pretty early stage of the rocket development process. And it’s not clear whether the vehicle will hit all its marks today — or even make it farther than the April test launch.

For his part, CEO Elon Musk likened the odds of success to a coin flip.

If all does go according to plan, it will look like this: Super Heavy will light up its engines and soar out over the Gulf of Mexico.

The booster will burn through its fuel in just a couple minutes before falling away from the Starship spacecraft.

Super Heavy will then be discarded into the ocean, though SpaceX will attempt to reignite its engines on the way down to practice how the vehicle could one day land back on dry ground so it can be be reused on future missions.

Starship, meanwhile, will light up its own six engines and propel itself to faster and faster speeds, with the goal of entering Earth’s orbit. From there, the mission is to complete nearly one full loop around the world and splash down off the coast of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.

If all goes as planned, the mission should last about one and a half hours from beginning to end.