IFT-3: SpaceX Launches Starship's 3rd Flight Test

The 122 meters tall megarocket loaded with 4500 metric tons of propellant lifted off at 1325 UTC(March 14) from the SpaceX's manufacturing and test launch facilities near Boca Chica Beach, Texas, starting the company's third integrated flight test of the spacecraft. Cheers erupted from crowd gathered about 8 kilometers away along the southern shores of South Padre Island and surrounding areas, as the sky was illuminated by the ignition of Starship's 33 first-stage Raptor engines, which briefly shrouded nearly the entire vehicle in a plume of dust and smoke.

"This flight pretty much just started, but we're farther than we've ever been before," SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said just after liftoff in a livestream. "We've got a starship, not just in space, but on its coast phase into space."

"Starship reached orbital velocity," SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced on X after liftoff. "Congratulations SpaceX team!!"

Two minutes 45 seconds after liftoff, Starship’s Raptor engines ignited during hot-staging separation, sending the 50 meters upper-stage spacecraft onward to space while the first stage Super Heavy is executing the flip maneuver and boostback burn to redirect its trajectory.

That post-staging burn reversed Super Heavy's velocity, and was intended to be followed minutes later by a landing burn above the Gulf of Mexico. However, it appears the Super Heavy's engines did not relight as planned, leading to the loss of the booster.

Starship is designed to be fully reusable, and SpaceX plans to land and relaunch its Super Heavy boosters, as it does with its Falcon 9 rockets. In the future, two "chopstick" arms on Starship's launch tower will catch the Super Heavy booster as it returns for landing, but IFT-3's Super Heavy was always expected to splash down in the Gulf.

"It didn't light all the engines that we expected and we did lose the booster," Huot said of the Super Heavy. "We'll have to go through the data to figure out exactly what happened, obviously."

Starship's upper stage continued flying after separation, but didn't attempt to go into a full orbit. Instead, the spacecraft entered a suborbital coast phase as it soared above Earth, during which SpaceX hoped to demonstrate two of the spacecraft's flight systems toward vehicle qualification -- the reignition of Starship's Raptor engines and the transfer of cryogenic fuel between tanks. Following these demonstrations, the spacecraft was expected to splash down in the Indian Ocean about 65 minutes after launch, but SpaceX lost contact with the Ship during reentry.

"We are making the call now that we have lost Ship 28," Huot said, referring to the Starship vehicle number, after an extended period without telemetry of contact with the vehicle. "We haven't heard from the ship up until this point and so the team has made the call that Ship has been lost. So, no splashdown today."

Improvements made between the first and second test flights IFT-1 and IFT-2 last year included the implementation of a "hot staging" technique, in which the upper stage engines begin firing before Starship's first-stage booster fully separates. IFT-2's hot staging maneuver was a success, as it was today as well.

SpaceX summarized Thursday's test flight on its website:

• For the second time, all 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy Booster started up successfully and completed a full-duration burn during ascent.

• Starship executed its second successful hot-stage separation, powering down all but three of Super Heavy’s Raptor engines and successfully igniting the six second stage Raptor engines before separating the vehicles.

• Following separation, the Super Heavy booster successfully completed its flip maneuver and completed a full boostback burn to send it towards its splashdown point in the Gulf of Mexico.

• Super Heavy successfully lit several engines for its first ever landing burn before the vehicle experienced a RUD (that’s SpaceX-speak for “rapid unscheduled disassembly”). The booster’s flight concluded at approximately 462 meters in altitude and just under seven minutes into the mission.

• Starship's six second stage Raptor engines all started successfully and powered the vehicle to its expected orbit, becoming the first Starship to complete its full-duration ascent burn.

• While coasting, Starship accomplished several of the flight test’s additional objectives, including the opening and closing of its payload door (aka the pez dispenser,) and initiating a propellant transfer demonstration. Starship did not attempt its planned on-orbit relight of a single Raptor engine due to vehicle roll rates during coast. Results from these demonstrations will come after postflight data review is complete.

• Starship went on to experience its first ever entry from space, providing valuable data on heating and vehicle control during hypersonic reentry. Live views of entry were made possible by Starlink terminals operating on Starship.

• The flight test’s conclusion came during entry, with the last telemetry signals received via Starlink from Starship at approximately 49 minutes into the mission.

Thursday's launch occurred on the 22nd anniversary of SpaceX's founding in 2002, the company said.

"Happy birthday to @SpaceX! What a day!" Gwynne Shotwell the rocket company's president and COO Gwynne Shotwell wrote on X. "HUGE congratulations to the entire team for this incredible day: clean count (glad the shrimpers could get out in the nick of time!), liftoff, hot staging, Super Heavy boost back and coast (and likely a couple engines making mainstage during landing burn!), clean ship 'insertion' and coast, payload door cycling and prop transfer demo (to be confirmed!), and ship entry!"

WATCH the launch of the IFT-3 mission