It was a one step forward, one step back day for SpaceX. The Mechazilla tower recaptured the incoming Starship booster in dramatic fashion, but the upper stage was lost due to an anomaly during ascent.
Starship lifted off from the Boca Chica launch pad at 5:37 PM ET, soaring into the clear blue Texas sky. The 403-foot-tall (123-meter) rocket initiated a hot staging and engine shutdown shortly before the three-minute mark. The booster then began its descent back to Earth, while the upper stage continued its journey into space.
Flight controllers quickly gave the go-ahead to capture the booster, and the Super Heavy returned to the launch pad about seven minutes after the mission ended. The “Mechazilla” launch tower, equipped with arms like chopsticks, successfully captured the incoming booster. This is the second time SpaceX has captured a booster (it did it for the first time on October 13, 2024 during Starship’s fifth test flight), further validating the acceptance tower concept and giving a big vote of confidence that Starship will eventually become a fully reusable launch system.
Mechazilla has captured the Super Heavy booster! pic.twitter.com/aq91TloYzY
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 16, 2025
While the booster succeeded in its mission, the same cannot be said for the upper stage. An unspecified anomaly resulted in the loss of the vehicle during ascent, preventing SpaceX from achieving several key objectives for the mission, including the deployment of dummy Starlink satellites. Starship failed before the 12-minute mark, and its final telemetry showed a speed of 13,246 miles per hour (21,317 kilometers per hour) and an altitude of 91 miles (146 kilometers).
The upper stage used for this mission—the seventh Starship flight test—had an upgraded design. It is the first major failure since the early days of the program’s fully integrated Starship tests. The upper stage, with its design changes, meant that SpaceX was essentially dealing with a new type of vehicle, with systems that communicated with each other for the first time. According to the SpaceX broadcast, “several engines failed” before communication was lost with the vehicle, which appeared to explode.
SpaceX will likely reveal the reason for the failure in the coming days or weeks, but needless to say, the company will learn something from this failure. That’s what SpaceX does — it treats failures as incremental stepping stones toward ultimate success.
“The Starship experienced a rapid unplanned disassembly during the ascent burn. “Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand the root cause,” the company explained twitter. “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship reliability.”
Unconfirmed photos show the upper stage falling back to Earth in pieces, leaving bright, colorful streaks in its wake.
RUD of the century tbh. pic.twitter.com/XCbFxtO2wE
— A. Pettit (@PettitFrontier) January 16, 2025
SpaceX is making steady progress toward turning Starship into a fully operational launch system, getting closer with each test flight. Once operational, the rocket is expected to revolutionize access to space, launching large batches of Starlink satellites along with payloads for paying customers. Its gigantic payload fairing and lifting power could even enable the design and deployment of spacecraft previously unlaunchable due to size and weight limitations; powered by 33 Raptor engines, the Starship should be capable of delivering 150 metric tons into low Earth orbit.
NASA, which invested in Starship as part of its Artemis program, plans to use the rocket’s upper stage as a human landing system for future missions to the moon. And, of course, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has far greater ambitions—he sees Starship as the key to colonizing Mars and transforming humanity into a multiplanetary species.