Highlights from SpaceX's test flight of the spacecraft

This particular flight, by design, was not intended to circumnavigate the Earth. At 8:25 a.m. Central time, Starship — the largest and most powerful rocket ever built — blasted off the coast of South Texas. The ascent was smooth, with the spacecraft's upper stage reaching orbital speeds. About 45 minutes after launch, it began re-entering the atmosphere, heading toward landing in the Indian Ocean.

The live video, transmitted in near real-time via SpaceX's Starlink satellites, showed hot gases heating up the underside of the vehicle. Then, 49 minutes after launch, communications with Starship ended, and SpaceX later said the vehicle did not survive reentry, and likely disintegrated and fell into the ocean.

However, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on what he called a “successful test flight” of the system that his agency relies on for some of its Artemis lunar missions.

SpaceX aims to make both the spacecraft's lower rocket booster and upper stage capable of flying over and over again, a stark contrast to the single-launch rockets that have been used for most of the space age.

This reusability gives SpaceX the ability to reduce the cost of satellites and telescopes, as well as the people and things they need to live in space.

Completing most of the short flight was reassuring confirmation that the rocket's design appeared sound. Not only is Starship crucial to NASA's lunar plans, it is also key to Mr. Musk's dream of sending humans to live on Mars.

For Mr. Musk, the success also goes back to his past reputation as a technology visionary who led stunning progress at Tesla and SpaceX, a contrast to his troubled purchase of Twitter and the polarizing social media quagmire that has followed since he transformed the platform and renamed it X. Even as SpaceX has launched its next-generation rocket. The social media company was competing with Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor who was… Share clips From a combat interview with Mr. Musk.

SpaceX still needs to carry out a series of massive rocket tests before Starship is ready to head to the moon and beyond. Earlier this week, Mr. Musk said He expressed his hope that at least six more Starship flights would be conducted this year, during which some of these experiments might be conducted.

But if it achieves all of these goals, the company could revolutionize space transportation again and leave competitors far behind.

The spacecraft's size and reusability have “tremendous game-changing potential for transportation to orbit,” said Phil Larson, a White House space adviser during the Obama administration who also previously worked on SpaceX's communications efforts. It can enable whole new categories of tasks.

NASA is relying on Starship to serve as the lunar lander for the Artemis 3 mission, a mission that will take astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years. This flight is currently scheduled for late 2026 but seems likely to fall to 2027 or later.

The third flight was a marked improvement over the first two launch attempts.

Last April, Starship rolled off the launch pad, but a series of engine failures and rocket fires destroyed the rocket 24 miles above the Gulf of Mexico.

In November, the second Starship launch went much further. All 33 engines in the Super Heavy booster worked properly during ascent, and after successful separation, the spacecraft's upper stage nearly reached orbital speeds. However, both phases ended in explosion.

However, Mr. Musk hailed both test flights as successful, providing data that helped engineers improve the design.

Thursday's launch — which coincided with SpaceX's 22nd anniversary — occurred 85 minutes into the 110-minute launch window. The rocket's 33 engines ignited at the launch site outside Brownsville, Texas, lifting the rocket, which was as tall as a 40-story building, into the morning sky.

Most of the flight went smoothly, and a number of in-flight testing objectives were achieved, such as opening and closing the spacecraft's payload doors, which will be necessary for future cargo delivery.

SpaceX did not attempt to recover the booster this time, but asked it to perform the engine burns that would be necessary to return to the launch site. However, the booster's recent landing, which was conducted over the Gulf of Mexico, was not entirely successful, an area that SpaceX will try to fix for future flights.

SpaceX said the Super Heavy rocket disintegrated at an altitude of about 1,500 feet.

SpaceX engineers will also have to figure out why the Starship didn't survive reentry and make fixes to the vehicle's design.

Even with the partial success of Thursday's flight, the spacecraft is far from ready to go to Mars, or even the moon. Given Mr. Musk's Mars ambitions, the spacecraft is much larger and more complex than NASA needs for an Artemis landing. For Artemis III, the two astronauts are scheduled to spend about a week in the moon's south pole region.

“He had a low price, and NASA chose to take the risks associated with that configuration,” Daniel Dumbacher, executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a former senior NASA official, said of Mr. Musk. Hopefully it will work. “We will see if that is true.”

To leave Earth's orbit, the spacecraft must refill its propellant tanks with liquid methane and liquid oxygen. This would require a complex design of additional spacecraft launches to transport propellant into orbit.

“This is a complex, complicated problem, and there's a lot to solve, a lot to get right,” Mr. Dombacher said.

Thursday's flight included an early test of the technology, as liquid oxygen was transferred from one tank to another inside the spacecraft.

Mr. Dembacher does not expect the spacecraft to be ready by September 2026, the launch date NASA currently has set for Artemis III, though he does anticipate how much of a delay that might occur. “I'm not going to give you a guess, because there's a lot of work, a lot of problems to solve,” he said.