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Yacht StarShip

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Yacht StarShip - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

Yacht StarShip

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Yacht StarShip - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024) - Tripadvisor

Yacht StarShip

About This Vendor

Yacht StarShip is a unique wedding boat venue cruising the waters of Downtown Tampa and Clearwater, FL. With its gourmet in-boat catering team, open bar packages, and crystal waterway surroundings, the yacht promises to be a luxurious and unforgettable setting for wedding events. Couples can dance the night away with the twinkling city lights in the background while reveling in the professional comforts provided by the crew. Ideal for intimate and lavish weddings, Yacht StarShip can accommodate 25 to 600 guests for the ultimate celebration experience. With several indoor and outdoor event spaces available onboard, the yacht is a charming venue all year long. Couples can say their vows on the top deck surrounded by breathtaking views of the bay while a ship captain officiates the happy occasion. During cocktail hour and reception, newlyweds can enjoy a toast to their big day in a beautifully decorated dining hall. Yacht StarShip offers all-inclusive wedding packages, complete with Three-Diamond rated catering, premium bar services, and breathtaking vistas. All packages include private yacht rental, a day-of coordinator, a DJ, buffet-style or seated dining, a Champagne toast, and event rentals such as linens, microphones, and ceremony music. Couples can upgrade their package with open bar services, ranging from drink ticket systems to luxury beers, wines, and liquors. For the food, the culinary team can whip up delightful appetizers, starters, entrées, and desserts to suit the newlyweds' tastes and specifications. Additionally, the yacht can provide certain enhancements to elevate any special occasion, such as florals, photography, an ice sculpture, and a photo booth.

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Pricing for Yacht StarShip

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Yacht StarShip Reviews

Yacht starship.

• Quality of service 4.9 out of 5 rating 4.9
• Average response time 4.9 out of 5 rating 4.9
• Professionalism 4.9 out of 5 rating 4.9
• Value 4.8 out of 5 rating 4.8
• Flexibility 4.9 out of 5 rating 4.9

• Quality of service 5.0 out of 5 rating 5.0
• Average response time 5.0 out of 5 rating 5.0
• Professionalism 5.0 out of 5 rating 5.0
• Value 5.0 out of 5 rating 5.0
• Flexibility 5.0 out of 5 rating 5.0

Absolutely Amazing

Best choice for rehearsal dinner

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Amazing wedding

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Rehearsal Dinner Cruise

StarShip Yacht Tampa Wedding

Yacht Starship IV

Amazing wedding yacht starship ii

Amazing Reception

Great food, service, beverages, entertainment - Awesome

Worth every penny!

All I dreamed of

Beautiful Venue for a Wedding

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Wedding on Starship III

Yacht Starship is the full package!

Fantastic venue

Amazing venue

Smooth Sailing with YachtStarship

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Amazing Venue and amazing staff!

Not a Thing I would Change!

Best experience ever

Sheer perfection!

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Starship (ex: My Seanna)

• Amenities & Toys
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STARSHIP YACHT CHARTER

56.39m  /  185'   delta marine   2001 / 2021.

• Previous Yacht

Cabin Configuration

Special Features:

• Chic beach club
• Opulent interiors with fittings brushed in 22 carat gold
• 360-degree views in master suite
• All-new watertoys in 2014
• Comprehensive AV and entertainment systems
• Sundeck sauna and gym
• Outdoor movie theatre
• Touch-and-go helipad
• World-class service

Suitable for a whole host of charter parties and different occassions, luxury yacht 'My Seanna' is one of the most opulently styled and extensively equipped yachts on the water

The 56.39m/185' 'Starship' (ex. My Seanna) motor yacht built by the American shipyard Delta Marine is available for charter for up to 12 guests in 6 cabins. This yacht features interior styling by Glade Johnson Design.

From bow to stern, Starship is brimming with an fantastic array of social and dining areas, both inside and out, making her the ideal yacht for relaxing and entertaining whilst on charter. She is equipped with a dancefloor, movie theatre, beach club and gym.

Guest Accommodation

Built in 2001, Starship offers guest accommodation for up to 12 guests in 6 suites comprising a master suite, one VIP cabin and four double cabins. There are 8 beds in total, including 3 king and 5 queen. She is also capable of carrying up to 11 crew onboard to ensure a relaxed luxury yacht charter experience.

Onboard Comfort & Entertainment

On your charter, you'll find plenty to keep you busy and entertained including a dancefloor where you and your guests can celebrate in style. Alternatively Starship boasts a movie theatre, perfect to relax after a long day on the water. Revive yourself after an intense workout in the sauna and make your day truly exceptional at the beach club. A gym with all the latest equipment is available for a good work out or elsewhere, sit back with a glass of champagne in the deck jacuzzi.

Whatever your activities on your charter, you'll find some impressive features are seamlessly integrated to help you including satellite communications, keeping you connected on any voyage. Take advantage of the on board Wi-Fi and stay connected at all times and guests will experience complete comfort while chartering thanks to air conditioning.

Performance & Range

Starship is built with a aluminium hull and composite superstructure. Powered by twin Caterpillar engines, she comfortably cruises at 12 knots, reaches a maximum speed of 15 knots with a range of up to 4,000 nautical miles from her 72,580 litre fuel tanks at cruising speed. An advanced stabilisation system on board reduces the side-to-side roll of the yacht and promises guests exceptional comfort levels at anchor or when underway.

Set against the backdrop of your chosen cruising ground, you and your guests can enjoy endless days of fun on the water with the exceptional collection of water toys and accessories aboard Starship. Principle among these are waterslides for hours of fun for all ages. Guests can feel the wind in their hair and jump the waves on one of the four WaveRunners. In addition there are waterskis that are hugely entertaining whether you are a beginner or a seasoned pro. If that isn't enough Starship also features scuba diving equipment, a seabob, wakeboards, kayaks, fishing equipment and much more. Starship has a 12.19m/40' Intrepid Tender to transfer you from ship to shore.

Based in the magical waters of the Caribbean all year round Starship is ready for your next luxury yacht charter. Let Starship Discover the magical places, food and experiences of the the Caribbean.

As you can see, luxury motor yacht Starship offers guests the very best onboard experience, from its sun-kissed top deck down to its standout waterside beach club promising truly memorable vacations that you"ll want to repeat again and again.

TESTIMONIALS

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Starship Photos

Amenities & Entertainment

For your relaxation and entertainment Starship has the following facilities, for more details please speak to your yacht charter broker.

Starship is reported to be available to Charter with the following recreation facilities:

• 1 x 12.19m  /  40' Intrepid Tender 400 HP engine

For a full list of all available amenities & entertainment facilities, or price to hire additional equipment please contact your broker.

Starship Awards & Nominations

• The World Superyacht Awards 2015 Refitted / Rebuilt / Converted Yachts Finalist
• + shortlist

For a full list of all available amenities & entertainment facilities, or price to hire additional equipment please contact your broker.

APPROVED RYA WATER SPORTS CENTRE

Your family and friends could learn to use the water toys on your charter vacation onboard this luxury charter yacht. Motor Yacht Starship is a certified RYA Training Centre yacht.

'Starship' Charter Rates & Destinations

Summer Season

May - September

$275,000 p/week + expenses

High Season

Cruising Regions

Caribbean Bahamas

HOT SPOTS:   Florida

Winter Season

October - April

$315,000 p/week + expenses

Charter Starship

To charter this luxury yacht contact your charter broker , or we can help you.

To charter this luxury yacht contact your charter broker or

BELOW DECK YACHT: MY SEANNA

Charter yacht MY SEANNA starred in Below Deck seasons 6 under her own name. View all  Below Deck yachts, their real names and the cost to rent them . 

On Board Review

Discover how the 56m/185ft motor yacht ‘My Seanna’ has transformed into one of the most opulent yachts on the charter market in YachtCharterFleet’s latest review.

The possibilities are endless aboard opulent Benetti build MY SEANNA

Read Review

Starship will be attending the following yacht shows. For more information please contact your preferred charter broker.

West Palm Beach, Florida

21st - 24th Mar 2024

Florida's East Coast beckons as the highly anticipated Palm Beach Boat Show returns for another glistening edition from 21-24 March at downtown West Palm Beach.

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Yacht Owner, Captain or Central Agents - Send us latest Photos, Charter Rates or Corrections Contact Us

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NOTE to U.S. Customs & Border Protection

Specification

SEASONAL CHARTER RATES

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Locally owned and operated for 23 years

Tampa & Clearwater

Welcome Aboard Yacht StarShip

With two decades of service, Yacht StarShip’s dining cruises have become a seaworthy staple. Cruise the waterways of Tampa Bay or Clearwater while enjoying a premier dining experience and an open bar that’s free at sea on select cruises.

award-winning

Premier Dining Cruises

Set sail on the waterways of Tampa Bay and Clearwater with Yacht StarShip and delight in a different kind of dining experience, with many cruises featuring an open bar that’s free at sea! When you come aboard our yachts, you can expect unmatched service, exquisite views and a delicious meal aboard America’s first 3-Diamond rated dining yacht. Experience stunning Clearwater sunsets or the bright city lights of Downtown Tampa as you sip and savor your way through our upscale cuisine and cocktails.

you are the captain

Host a Private Charter

Yacht StarShip’s fleet of four luxury yachts are perfect for any size event from 25 – 600 guests and feature top quality service, breathtaking views, entertainment, and award-winning cuisine. Our all-inclusive event packages make planning easy seabreezy. Whether you want to tie the knot on a yacht, or create a sea of memories with a social celebration, our dedicated crew is here for you.

a sea of memories

Specialty Cruises

Yacht StarShip wants to be your celebration destination. With holiday cruises all throughout December, we have a cruise that fits the occasion with specially-themed menus and decor. Simply book your holiday cruise and let us do the rest.

Upcoming Cruises

Set Sail with Yacht StarShip

Book your next adventure with us! 

Grady Irvin - July 2023

This was a great family night out for my moms 42nd birthday and I will for sure be coming back. The scene, view, music and environment was a whole win!!

Riley Liles - Brunch Cruise September 2023

Herbert brown - september 2023.

The food was delicious! Our server was really great. Everyone in our party had a wonderful time.

David Chalupa, Clearwater Dinner Cruise - December 2022

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Marry Me Tampa Bay | Most Trusted Wedding Vendor Search and Real Wedding Inspiration Site

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Yacht StarShip

Tampa and Clearwater, FL – Create a sea of memories dancing under the stars aboard Yacht StarShip! Yacht StarShip offers a variety of all-inclusive wedding packages for most budgets so you can set sail on your big day completely stress-free. With four breathtaking yachts in our fleet, your dream Tampa Bay wedding, reception and rehearsal dinner can come true on the water. With the luxury of reserving your private dining room OR your private yacht, your guests are sure to be wowed by this venue with an ever-changing backdrop! Yacht StarShip can relocate to St Pete and surrounding areas!

The Ceremony:

Dockside or Underway: The Ceremony is included in the package, or the option of an extended reception time if no ceremony. You can provide your own officiant or the Captain can perform the ceremony for $200 dockside or $400 underway.

• Includes White Chairs, Music (DJ), Microphone

The Cocktail Hour:

Included in the packages: Tables, Chairs, White Tablecloths, and Napkins. Some packages include hand-passed hors d’oeuvres.

The Reception:

Private Yacht or Room on a Public Yacht

Private yacht charters are for 25 or more guests and include: Venue Aboard Private Yacht, Ceremony – White Chairs, Microphone, and Music or Extended Reception Time if No Ceremony, Dinner, DJ, Coordinator, White Table Cloths and Napkins, Coffee and Iced Tea, Champagne Toast, Cake Cutting & Service, Servers, Bartenders and All Required Staffing. Tax and 22% service charge are additional.

You will only need to provide any further décor, photographer, and cake.

• Most events are 4-5 hours. 30 minutes boarding and the rest cruising.
• Capacity: 25-600 (300 seated)

The Food & Drink:

Different packages include different levels of alcohol that the client will pay for. Champagne toast, coffee, and iced tea are included in all of our packages.

Meet Chris Dorroh

Chris and Wendy are two of the best wedding sales managers in Tampa Bay! Both have years of wedding and event experience and they truly love what they do. It is a pleasure to work with couples and help them select an amazing venue, offering a unique experience on the water. Yacht StarShip is a fabulous venue, that strives to make your special day perfect!

Website 813-223-7999

Yacht StarShip Reviews from Marry Me Tampa Bay Couples:

Marry Me Tampa Bay curates the below reviews from real couples whom we've personally interviewed. As Tampa Bay's most trusted wedding planning resource, these reviews are 100% accurate and aren't created by fake accounts.

Elegant Black and White Clearwater Wedding | The Yacht Starship

We knew that our friends and family would have to travel to our wedding. Being spread out all over Canada meant that either Jon and I would be traveling or all our guests would. Jon was firm on making sure that our wedding would give everyone the opportunity to go on a fantastic vacation.

We had contacted many venues for our wedding, looking for something that catered to an intimate 50-guest, destination wedding. We wanted a venue that could host our ceremony, dinner, and reception. We needed something at one place because with all of our guests traveling to us, we had limited access to transportation. There were a lot of Uber rides and car rentals during our wedding weekend, so having a venue that provided our whole wedding in one place was really important. Yacht Starship provided a unique experience. The scenic venue and hospitality of the employees were amazing.

The most important elements of our wedding were the venue and the atmosphere. We wanted a venue that was unique and accessible, something that would create a lifelong memory for our friends and family who traveled from another country. We also wanted a light-hearted and fun atmosphere, and so we thought an open bar accompanied that well. We chose Yacht Starship because we thought it would be a unique and extravagant experience for our guests. Also, we needed something all in one place because with all of our guests traveling to us, we had limited access to transportation, so having a venue that provided our whole wedding in one place was really important. Yacht StarShip provided a unique experience, and the scenic venue and hospitality of the employees were amazing. The employees made it clear to us that they would ensure a personalized event and that we would have the day of our dreams. Being from Canada, we had a lot of questions, and there was no shortage of emails from me during the planning, but the Yacht StarShip always had a timely and helpful response. We loved working with them and would highly recommend them to any couple attempting to host a destination wedding!

Blush Pink and White Waterfront Downtown Tampa Wedding | Yacht StarShip

We looked for something that was all-inclusive since we were re-planning the wedding so quickly. The Yacht StarShip offered a venue, amazing picture spots, catering, a coordinator, and a DJ which was everything we were looking for!

We hired Yacht StarShip because they were all-inclusive and checked all of our boxes when planning. They were absolutely amazing and so accommodating throughout the whole process. Chris was our coordinator, and she was so patient with my last-minute changes. She worked with our timeline and made sure we had a beautiful event!

Nautical Inspired Downtown Tampa Wedding | Yacht StarShip

We looked for a location that was “all-inclusive,” affordable, and that would offer an enjoyable evening for everyone on our guest list. We also looked for a venue that fit our story and our unique personalities.

After speaking to many venues all over the state, we were amazed at everything Yacht StarShip offered for their very affordable packages. We were thrilled that we could get married on a boat, and the staff impressed us not only on our exploratory visit but also during our complimentary dinner cruise to experience the yacht before booking.

Everyone we encountered was extremely easy to work with, helpful in every way, and had the best personalities. Chris, our wedding coordinator, walked us through every step and reminded us of everything that we may have forgotten along the way. The Captain ensured that we stayed in smooth waters and our DJ spent the entire night feeling the crowd out and keeping everyone dancing. The entire staff also accommodated our last-minute changes due to guest cancellations, timeline changes, and some last-minute dinner revisions. Overall, their service from start to finish was phenomenal; we couldn't have asked for better.

The most memorable moment for us was walking down the aisle after the famous ‘I do.' Being surrounded by our family and friends, experiencing the salty air and perfect breeze was the best moment of the whole day as it felt like we could take on the world!

Tropical Pineapple Inspired Waterfront Tampa Wedding | Yacht StarShip

I wanted something that was a complete 180 from our original venue.  I knew if we were going to move our wedding to Florida, I wanted it to be on the Yacht Starship (actually my dad’s suggestion). We both thought a wedding on a boat was really special and unique. We also liked that we were able to space ourselves out and that it was open air.

The Yacht Starship was amazing from beginning to end. They handled everything and really made planning a wedding from across the country, in the middle of a pandemic, possible. We cannot say enough good things about Chris Dorroh (our planner), the officiant, the food, the DJ, and the whole experience.

Navy Blue and Dusty Rose Nautical Downtown Tampa Wedding | Yacht Starship

We looked for convenience, all-inclusive prices, and easy setup and tear-down service.

We chose the Yacht StarShip because most services were all included including food and drinks, ceremony chairs and sound system, cake cutting, DJ, setup, and tear-down. We were able to provide all the decorations, and they set them all up prior to the wedding. Our family and friends did not have to lift a finger!

Romantic Blue Coastal Chic Tampa Waterfront Wedding | Yacht StarShip

We envisioned a venue in the heart of Tampa with a water aspect.

The Yacht StarShip is like family to us! I worked there throughout college and Taylor is a captain on the yachts. We thought it would be a great way to give our guests the best experience.

The Yacht StarShip includes an event planner, catering, bar services, and even DJ entertainment which was amazin g!

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giant leap —

After thursday’s flight, starship is already the most revolutionary rocket ever built, for fun, we could compare starship as it exists today to other available rockets..

Eric Berger - Mar 15, 2024 2:39 pm UTC

One of the best things about spaceflight is its power to dazzle us.

I will never forget seeing the first images of Pluto and its moon Charon for the first time, with their vibrant colors and exotic geology. A world with super-sized ice volcanoes? Oh my. Similarly affecting were up-close views of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, revealed by Europe's Philae lander. And it is difficult to forget the harrowing footage of NASA's Perseverance rover landing on Mars.

But no space agency or company has dazzled us more in the last 10 years than SpaceX. The company produces moments of wonder and originality that are both breathtaking and full of promise. What SpaceX does best is provide us a glimpse into a tantalizingly close future.

And that happened again on Thursday with the third Starship launch.

Was that sci-fi?

The moment of true amazement came about 45 minutes into the flight, as Starship descended an altitude of 100 km and began entering a thicker atmosphere. For a couple of minutes, we were treated to unprecedented views of atmospheric heating acting on a spacecraft. It's one thing to know about the perils of plasma and compression as a spacecraft falls back to Earth at 27,000 km/hour into thickening air. It's another thing to see it.

Let's step back for just a moment to realize how these unprecedented views were possible.

Starlink terminals on the ship were sending signals to satellites in low-Earth orbit, which then sent them back to Earth. This is not a new idea. For the last 40 years, NASA has used a small constellation of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites to communicate with spacecraft, beginning with the Space Shuttle. Starship was able to communicate with these satellites upon its reentry, but it was only at a low data rate, and it dropped out as the plasma thickened. The Starlink connection remained longer and is what enabled the stunning video of reentry.

To accomplish this, SpaceX had to build a reusable rocket, the Falcon 9, which is capable of reflying many times. This enabled the company to launch more than 5,500 Starlink satellites and create a global network. (SpaceX operates, by a factor of 10, more satellites than any other company or country in the world). Because of this, it was able to produce unprecedented data and video of Starship's turbulent reentry.

Starship re-entering Earth's atmosphere. Views through the plasma pic.twitter.com/HEQX4eEHWH — SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2024

The journey to reach this capability has produced many of those dazzling moments. There was that first land-based landing of the Falcon 9 rocket days before Christmas in 2015. It was followed a few months later by the first landing of a booster on a drone ship. (For me, this CRS-8 booster landing on a boat felt like the first actual sci-fi thing I'd ever seen in my life). There was Starman in orbit and the dual booster landing with the first Falcon Heavy launch. And so on.

These SpaceX moments feel like a portal opening into the future. That is their power. The first booster landings hinted at the possibility of reusing first stages. The dual booster landing suggested it could be done at scale. Today, we're seeing this promised future as some Falcon rockets fly 20 times, and SpaceX is likely to approach a truly unprecedented 150 launches this year. This high launch cadence enabled Starlink, through which SpaceX has delivered high-speed broadband around the world and in space.

What Thursday's revelatory reentry footage promises is a world in which launch is cheap and abundant. No longer will we need to worry so much about mass or volume, which have been tyrannical overlords to mission planners since the inception of spaceflight nearly seven decades ago.

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SpaceX launches Starship rocket on third test flight

By Jackie Wattles and Adrienne Vogt , CNN

It's not clear if Starship survived reentry

The fate of Starship may be unknown. Teams on the ground lost contact with the vehicle after it plunged back toward Earth and re-entered the atmosphere.

The spacecraft appeared to make it through several crucial milestones. But we don't know if it made it all the way to the ocean in one piece.

SpaceX is now looking to gather data on all of that, said SpaceX’s Kate Tice.

“So far, all of that has gone really well,” she said. “We were trying to figure out today — how do we get Starship to survive orbital velocity, atmospheric entry? And we hope to find out soon.”

SpaceX's Dan Huot added:

"It did look like we lost Starlink (connection) and (some of our) data flow at the exact same time," Huot said. "If both of those signals are cutting out at the exact same time, that could mean we lost the ship."

Starship is in a blackout period

The spacecraft isn't sharing data right now, said SpaceX's Dan Huot.

"We're still waiting to see if we're gonna get data back from the ship," he said. "We might be in a bit of a blackout period right now."

SpaceX confirmed that Starship was reentering Earth's atmosphere.

But SpaceX engineer Kate Tice cautioned that the vehicle might not make it all the way to its intended landing site in the Indian Ocean.

18,000 small hexagonal tiles are protecting Starship during reentry

The Starship spacecraft is coated in about 18,000 lightweight, ceramic hexagonal tiles.

The scale-like coating on much of the ship is designed to protect the vehicle from the scorching-hot temperatures it endures as it plunges back into the Earth's atmosphere.

Starship glows bright red as it re-enters Earth's atmosphere

Starship is plunging back toward Earth. And the live stream just showed a vibrant halo of bright red glowing around the vehicle.

That was plasma — created by the extreme heat and pressure the Starship endures as it moves back into the thick atmosphere.

“The atmosphere is actually doing us a huge favor here by acting as a braking system for Starship,” notes Kate Tice, one of the hosts of SpaceX’s livestream.

SpaceX opts not to reignite Starship's engine

SpaceX has made it through some crucial milestones. But the company just revealed it won't attempt to reignite Starship's engines after a half-hour coasting phase.

Starship is on a "pretty steep trajectory," said Dan Huot, a SpaceX communication manager said. That means Earth's gravity will rapidly drag Starship back toward Earth, whether or not engines are re-lit.

It's not clear why SpaceX decided to forgo that test.

Engineers noted a lot of data needs to be evaluated in the hours and days ahead.

SpaceX says it completed the payload door test but needs to conduct "data reviews"

Yet another key milestone was hit during this test flight.

The company shared footage of the checkout. These doors will have to open on future flights if Starship deploys satellites.

But SpaceX engineers said on the webcast they still need to do some "data reviews" on how the door action and the propellant transfer demo went.

SpaceX says the propellant transfer demo is complete

SpaceX just shared on the social media platform X that a propellant transfer demo planned for this flight is finished.

If successful, it's yet another massive win for the company.

The goal is to move some of the propellant on board the Starship vehicle from one tank to another, according to a December email from NASA explaining the test.

SpaceX engineers designed that demo to begin hashing out how Starship will be refueled on future missions while it’s in orbit. It could take more than a dozen refueling flights to get Starship to the moon.

NASA previously told CNN that SpaceX could receive more than $50 million for completing this test.

SpaceX is turning heads with jazzy hold music

From CNN's Jackie Wattles and Ross Levitt

The SpaceX livestream is turning some heads with its surprising choice in music, which is entertaining listeners as the Starship spacecraft coasts through space before reigniting its engines.

Currently, the song is "Caribbean Cruise" by Werner Tautz.

Thomas Zurbuchen, the former associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, chimed in about the tunes.

Starship’s goal? Take humans to the moon and Mars

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, and it inked another $1 billion deal after that.

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

That task would require a truly massive rocket.

“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:

• Send paying customers (or space tourists) on trips to deep space. At least one customer — a Japanese billionaire — is already signed up.
• Launch batches of SpaceX's Starlink satellites, which beam internet service across the globe.
• Potentially launch new scientific instruments, such as space-based telescopes.

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SpaceX's Starship Perished In a Haze of Plasma — Here's When the Next Launch Could Be

What goes up must face super-hot atmospheric plasma to come down.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket, the most powerful ever built, successfully reached space for the second time on Thursday. After the mighty first-stage booster Super Heavy delivered Starship into Earth orbit, the rocket achieved many firsts. But it also fell short.

The 397-foot-tall orbiter ended its test flight after flying longer and faster than ever before. It perished after entering Earth’s atmosphere during reentry and crashing into the Indian Ocean.

Unlike the last flight test in November, Starship survived long after separating from Super Heavy. Starship then entered Earth orbit for the first time, having crossed the designated border into space known as the Kármán line. It climbed to an altitude of at least 234 kilometers high and sustained speeds of more than 26,000 kilometers per hour. Following several tests and test omissions, Starship sent its last telemetry about 49 minutes after launch.

SpaceX is inching towards its own-established finish line. The Thursday flight was the third attempt for Elon Musk’s company to get the rocket into the sky from their Starbase launch facility at Boca Chica, Texas, by the Gulf of Mexico, and for Starship to take a 90-minute flight. But to be ready to carry hefty cargo and passengers on trips to deep space, Starship needs more work.

What happens next?

SpaceX will assess the results of Thursday’s flight.

According to SpaceX’s presentation during Thursday’s test, Super Heavy did well, and SpaceX views this launch as a success. It ignited its 33 Raptor engines upon takeoff, and minutes later it successfully performed critical maneuvers. But it didn't quite complete its final maneuvers before it splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico.

Super Heavy is designed to be reusable, so subsequent testing will attempt to get the booster to land back on Earth like the much smaller SpaceX Falcon 9 boosters regularly do now.

Starship aced payload and payload door test during Thursday’s flight. SpaceX officials said they will need to review the data to confirm how well it performed. Starship is designed to carry 100 to 150 tons of cargo into space, a massive increase compared to its current International Space Station ferry, Dragon, which can deliver 13,000 pounds into space.

Starship also has to test out its ability to reignite its engines from microgravity in space, after the first burn and after entering a coast phase. It’s called the on-orbit re-light demo. On Thursday, Starship’s software skipped the test. One possible explanation is that Starship’s orientation in space wasn’t ideal for sudden changes in velocity.

Starship will need to do that test in the future. The reignition of Starship’s six engines is critical for future in-space maneuvers, like achieving a good deorbit burn to get the craft to land on Earth someday, or to get it going on a journey into deep space.

Thursday was also important because it was the first reentry test for Starship.

Its hypersonic reentry was more than five times the speed of sound, according to SpaceX. Much like launch, reentry packs a lot of dramatic phenomena in just a few minutes, which the team is still learning about. They’ll evaluate data about Starship’s motion control and the heat shield, which work in tandem to keep the heat shield facing downward to protect the spacecraft.

The team may create new models of the plasma field, too. The presenters in SpaceX’s Thursday broadcast said the massive size of Starship would hopefully prevent the plasma of reentry from enveloping the craft, but moments later, that’s just what happened.

Beyond the spacecraft

Next, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will get involved. SpaceX will need their permission to fly again. And then along the way, some other things might be happening.

The Starship rocket launching on March 14, 2024 from Boca Chica, Texas.

SpaceX makes changes to each of their subsequent flights. They’re to address issues that happened previously, but the solutions might have their own consequences.

For instance, the first Starship flight in April 2023 resulted in the destruction of the launchpad’s foundation. Debris went flying because the power of Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines, and 16.7 million pounds of thrust, overwhelmed the structure. To address this issue, SpaceX’s second flight introduced a steel plate metal sheet that would create a barrier between the engines and the foundation. It works in tandem with a water deluge system to cool the surface down. Thursday’s flight would have been only the second time this system is evaluated and may have provided the team with new insights about how successful their metal plate is at protecting the launchpad.

The water component of this cooling system is also something to assess. According to an FAA report published after the first test, SpaceX personnel must test the water in the collection tanks after the launches to measure for any toxins or heavy metals present, which could have been released through a process called ablation as the high heat of the Raptor engines smashed into the metal plate, and mixing with the vapor or the liquid water.

These are some of the environmental assessments that SpaceX is required to perform more broadly to determine what negative effects the acute, powerful launches have on the surrounding coastal region, and how to address or restore them.

Starship’s future is yet to be seen, but testing has so far been beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.

• Space Science

SpaceX launches giant Starship rocket into space on epic 3rd test flight (video)

SpaceX's megarocket reached orbital speed with a space test flight under its belt.

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas — SpaceX's Starship megarocket, the world's largest and most powerful rocket, reached orbital speed for the first time Thursday in a historic third test flight from South Texas.

Hundreds of Spring Break spectators, rocket launch chasers and SpaceX fans gathered along the southern shores of South Padre Island and surrounding areas to witness the third test flight of the biggest rocket ever built. About 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of the crowds, SpaceX's massive Starship vehicle lifted off this morning (March 14) at 9:25 a.m. EDT (1325 GMT) from the company's manufacturing and test launch facilities near Boca Chica Beach.

"Starship reached orbital velocity," SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced on X (formerly Twitter) after liftoff. "Congratulations SpaceX team!!" The launch occurred on the 22nd anniversary of SpaceX's founding in 2002, the company said.

Neither the Starship vehicle nor its Super Heavy booster survived all the way through to their intended splashdown, but SpaceX officials said the test flight achieved several of its key goals during the flight. 

Cheers erupted from the South Padre crowd as the dim morning sky was illuminated by the ignition of Starship's 33 first-stage Raptor engines, which quickly shrouded nearly the entire vehicle in a plume of dust and smoke. Seconds later, the 400-foot tall (122 meters) rocket rose from the plume, quickly increasing its climb skyward. 

"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."

Related: Relive SpaceX Starship's 3rd flight test in breathtaking photos

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If you can't see SpaceX's Starship in person, you can score a model of your own. Standing at 13.77 inches (35 cm), this is a 1:375 ratio of SpaceX's Starship as a desktop model. The materials here are alloy steel and it weighs just 225g.

Note: Stock is low so you'll have to act quickly to get this. 

Today's launch, designated Integrated Flight Test-3 (IFT-3), was the third test mission for the fully stacked Starship. The first and second Starship launches both ended explosively last year, with the vehicles detonating before the completion of each flight's mission objectives. However, data collected during those first flights helped SpaceX engineers get Starship ready for success down the road. 

Improvements made between 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, known as Super Heavy, fully separates. IFT-2's hot staging maneuver was a success, as it was today as well.

High in the sky, Starship's two stages separated about 2 minutes 45 seconds after liftoff, sending the 165-foot-tall (50 m) upper-stage spacecraft onward to space while Super Heavy began preparations for a 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. 

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

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.

Related:   Starship and Super Heavy: SpaceX's deep-space transportation for the moon and Mars

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."

Rapid progress is needed for Starship, which is on the critical path for NASA's Artemis 3 mission. Artemis 3 aims to land the first humans on the moon since the end of the Apollo era in the early 1970s. Artemis 3 is currently scheduled for 2026, giving Starship less than two years to meet NASA vehicle qualifications for landing astronauts on the lunar surface.

Related: Facts about NASA's Artemis program

SpaceX has a lot riding on its Starship reusable launch system, chief of which is its role to land NASA Artemis 3 astronauts on the moon by 2026, which will require over a dozen Starship launches per lunar landing. The company has already  sold private trips around the moon on Starship and sees Starship and Super Heavy as the lynchpin of its Mars and deep-space exploration plan, as well as heavy-lift launch options for its Starlink megaconstellation and other payloads.

— Starship and Super Heavy: SpaceX's Mars transportation system

— SpaceX: Facts about Elon Musk's private spaceflight company

— SpaceX delays second Starship test launch to Nov. 18 to replace rocket part

SpaceX has other plans hinging on Starship as well. The company is relying on Starship's unmatched payload capacity to launch the next generation of its Starlink internet satellites. Other Starship flights have been purchased by private entities, including Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa's Dear Moon mission to fly himself and eight others around our nearest celestial neighbor.

Starship's success today likely signals an uptick of launches from SpaceX's Boca Chica facility. Equipment needed to build a second launch tower at the site have begun arriving for assembly, and infrastructure supporting Starship launches from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida are also well underway. 

A faster launch cadence would expedite Starship's qualification by NASA to carry astronauts, but reaching NASA's ambitious Artemis 3 timeline may still be a stretch. SpaceX is no stranger to fast launch cadences, though. In regular operation now for over a decade, the company's Falcon 9 rocket has broken its own annual launch record for year after year, and is set to do so again in 2024.

Starship is designed with even more rapid reusability in mind. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said the company eventually aims to launch, land and relaunch multiple Starship vehicles daily. 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

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Josh Dinner is Space.com's Content Manager. He is a writer and photographer with a passion for science and space exploration, and has been working the space beat since 2016. Josh has covered the evolution of NASA's commercial spaceflight partnerships, from early Dragon and Cygnus cargo missions to the ongoing development and launches of crewed missions from the Space Coast, as well as NASA science missions and more. He also enjoys building 1:144 scale models of rockets and human-flown spacecraft. Find some of Josh's launch photography on Instagram and his website , and follow him on Twitter , where he mostly posts in haiku.

FAA to oversee investigation of SpaceX Starship's 3rd test flight

NASA celebrates SpaceX Starship's 3rd test flight, but more work needed ahead of Artemis moon missions

Artemis 2 moon astronauts celebrate engine test for future lunar missions (video)

• TEAMSWITCHER It was very exciting and the onboard cameras provided incredible views .. but at the same time begs tons of questions. Both the Booster and Starship seemed to suffer from control issues. The Booster flight looked fantastic until it entered the thicker atmosphere. Then, despite rapid and pronounced gyrations of the grid fins lost flight control. The Starship was also performing well, but as it approached reentry appeared to tumble end over end unable to attain a consistent attitude. Starship then likely broke up on re-entry - which I think is very unfortunate. Both NASA and even the Russians were able to demonstrate a successful Space Shuttle reentry on their first try. I get it .. SpaceX is testing differently .. but this failure will demand an explanation. Optimists think every problem has a solution, but when it comes reusable space vehicles (as we have seen with the Space Shuttle) the solution can also be the problem. Was this an unexpected failure of critical components? Or is the design itself simply incapable of surviving the harsh conditions reentering the atmosphere? The answer to this question might save (or kill) the entire Starship program. Reply
• Unclear Engineer The distressing aspect of the Starship final moments is that I don't think it provided the data about exactly what happened because of the communications blackout period. And with no wreckage recovery, there may be some important questions left unanswered. Perhaps future test flights need some sort of "black box" data recorder and a means to retrieve it. But, retrieving it may be the hardest part. Without being pretty comfortable about the final trajectory, it might not be safe to have the terminal location occur on land or even in shallow areas of the ocean, which are still near habitation. Hopefully, there were some observation satellites that can give us at least a rough idea of this Starship's fate during the reentry. Reply
• Brad Much better than previous launches but at this pace they will never be ready for Artemis. I mean just the FAA process alone after each failure will make that goal impossible. I think what will happen is he will use NASA funding to continue to develop this kind of (really moon landing a Starship?) vehicle so he can use it to deploy Starlink which is his primary goal. Look at SpaceX history. That's exactly how Falcon 9 was developed and while it has launched a good amount of cargo/people to the ISS and satellites for other providers, mostly it has deployed Starlink for SpaceX. By a huge margin. NASA and tax payers get nothing in return for that. I would be more than shocked if Starship ever got close to a moon landing. What lands on the moon will look nothing like Starship. Reply

Brad said: Much better than previous launches but at this pace they will never be ready for Artemis. I mean just the FAA process alone after each failure will make that goal impossible. I think what will happen is he will use NASA funding to Scontinue to develop this kind of (really moon landing a Starship?) vehicle so he can use it to deploy Starlink which is his primary goal. Look at SpaceX history. That's exactly how Falcon 9 was developed and while it has launched a good amount of cargo/people to the ISS and satellites for other providers, mostly it has deployed Starlink for SpaceX. By a huge margin. NASA and tax payers get nothing in return for that. I would be more than shocked if Starship ever got close to a moon landing. What lands on the moon will look nothing like Starship.

• newtons_laws A successful 3rd test of starship, achieving most if not quite all of its intended goals. (Super Heavy landing burn engines failed to ignite and Starship appears to have broken up on re-entry). As regards the re-entry the on board video from around 45 minutes after lift off appears to show a number of small black objects coming away from Starship, I presume they are thermal tiles? If so that may or may not have been influential in the ultimate loss of the Starship? Reply

Brad said: Much better than previous launches but at this pace they will never be ready for Artemis. I mean just the FAA process alone after each failure will make that goal impossible. I think what will happen is he will use NASA funding to continue to develop this kind of (really moon landing a Starship?) vehicle so he can use it to deploy Starlink which is his primary goal. Look at SpaceX history. That's exactly how Falcon 9 was developed and while it has launched a good amount of cargo/people to the ISS and satellites for other providers, mostly it has deployed Starlink for SpaceX. By a huge margin. NASA and tax payers get nothing in return for that. I would be more than shocked if Starship ever got close to a moon landing. What lands on the moon will look nothing like Starship.

Bigref said: This thinking is similar to most non-business, sociological but illogical models. Executive J makes too much, and therefore his company is bad for their customers or corporation B has big profits, and therefore they are unfair to consumers. Give no mind to the fact that B is providing the best product at the best price. SpaceX is saving NASA and taxpayers money with every ounce they carry into orbit for scientific and government payloads. I expect the ISS inhabitants may also find fault with your analysis that “NASA and taxpayers get nothing”. NASA has paid contractors $ Billions without a single successful launch to date. SpaceX is again saving taxpayers and NASA. NASA and taxpayers experience financial benefits through providing results on their investments. Further gain is made by producing usable technology for a fraction of what has been historically spent. Value for dollars spent is “something” in return. If Boeing were building a rocket instead of SpaceX, it would not be out of the engineers' hands yet. Forget about having 3 test flights. The necessary heavy booster would be in the Boeing, ULA and Blue Origin bait and switch pattern: Launch in 2020, make that 2022, oops, need another couple of billion to launch in 2023, umm, would you believe May 2024? How close do you suppose American aerospace would be to a super heavy booster without SpaceX? Decades away. In the end, what difference does it make if SpaceX launches some satellites alongside purchased transport? They are ,pound per pound, the best value, actually putting space payloads into orbit.

Brad said: Thanks for the response SpaceX. lol the same narcissists crap Elon pumps out daily.

Philly said: Sorry but I don't think you fully understand, how NASA painted themselves into a corner with the Artemis program. They funded SLS and Orion. They didn't fund or properly plan for a Lunar lander. NOT SX's problem. Thus at some point they looked around and said hey we need a lander for Artemis. Keeping the SLS and Orion funding going while it takes another decade to build a lander would of been a real challenge. Expecting BO to build a lander when they still are trying to put anything into orbit is a pipe dream. There was only 1 company building a lander. 1st point. SX is developing a Mars transportation and landing system with Starship. They have their own schedule and plans for this. They didn't seem interested in delaying their Mars lander system. If NASA wants to use the Mars lander for the Moon that is fine, but they it is being built for Mars Specs. NASA's Moon schedule and deadline is their own political driven agenda, but it really isn't something I believe SX is that worried about. If they wanted to build a Lunar lander they would of made a 3rd stage for Starship and a small grasshopper style lander. Of course that would delay their Mars plans for at least a decade. 2nd point. Everyone needs to let go of Apollo, thinking. A small LEM Apollo style lander puts us right back to the problem of " Now What? " we faced in 1972. If you can only place 2 astronauts on the surface in what basically is a small weekend camper. The cold shower reality is, there is only so much you can actually do besides plant a flag, take some selfie's and grab some rocks. Apollo was a dead end as far a tech. It was designed to get to the Moon and back before the end the 1960's. There was no path forward to develop any infrastructure on the moon without upgraded rockets and new landing systems. The SX/Mars system can put 100+ tons on the surface of the Moon. That is a lot of food, water and infrastructure. Land 3 ships and you're looking at over 300 tons. Physics demands orbital refueling to put that much weight on the Moon but if solved, all of a sudden a real Moon base is possible. If we're going to go back let's go to stay this time. NOW, we're looking at taking not a small step but another giant leap.

• Unclear Engineer Well, that is some BS history, too. From Wikipedia: The Constellation program was a crewed spaceflight program developed by NASA,, from 2005 to 2009. The major goals of the program were "completion of the International Space Station" and a "return to the Moon no later than 2020" with a crewed flight to the planet Mars as the ultimate goal. Constellation began in response to the goals laid out in the Vision for Space Exploration under NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and President George W. Bush. O'Keefe's successor, Michael D. Griffin, ordered a complete review, termed the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, which reshaped how NASA would pursue the goals laid out in the Vision for Space Exploration, and its findings were formalized by the NASA Authorization Act of 2005. The Act directed NASA to "develop a sustained human presence on the Moon, including a robust precursor program to promote exploration, science, commerce and US preeminence in space, and as a stepping stone to future exploration of Mars and other destinations." Work began on this revised Constellation Program, to send astronauts first to the International Space Station, then to the Moon, and then to Mars and beyond. Subsequent to the findings of the Augustine Committee in 2009 that the Constellation Program could not be executed without substantial increases in funding, on February 1, 2010, President Barack Obama proposed to cancel the program. In 2011, NASA adopted the design of its new Space Launch System. The Artemis program is a Moon exploration program that is led by the United States' NASA and was formally established in 2017 via Space Policy Directive 1. The Artemis program is intended to reestablish a human presence on the Moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. The program's stated long-term goal is to establish a permanent base on the Moon to facilitate human missions to Mars. Two principal elements of the Artemis program are derived from the now-cancelled Constellation program: the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (as a reincarnation of Ares V). Other elements of the program, such as the Lunar Gateway space station and the Human Landing System, are in development by government space agencies and private spaceflight companies. This collaboration is bound together by the Artemis Accords and governmental contracts. In the third phase of its HLS procurement process NASA awarded SpaceX a contract in April 2021 to develop, produce, and demonstrate Starship HLS So, as I have already posted, the original NASA plan was to go to the Moon and then to Mars. That was not getting government funding at the necessary level from Congress. Obama cancelled most of the program, and Trump reinitiated some of it. But, even the original Constellation program was planning to land on the Moon, and establish a presence there. So, NASA should have been planning a lander along with the various rocket launch vehicle with the changing name that became SLS. The problem is just that NASA is not getting the funding to do all of that. But, it has been in the plans since about 2005, with the original moon landing date set at 2020. NASA let the contract to SpaceX for the lander a year after the lander was originally scheduled to land. It looks like SpaceX plans to go to the Moon no matter what NASA does. So, for SpaceX, it is just a matter of delivering on a fixed-price contract with NASA. If NASA cancels the contract, it probably won't have much effect on SpaceX. Reply
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Yacht StarShip - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

Highlights From SpaceX’s Starship Test Flight

The powerful rocket, a version of which will carry astronauts to the moon for NASA, launched for the third time on Thursday morning. It achieved a number of milestones before losing contact with the ground.

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Kenneth Chang

Here’s what happened during the third test flight of the most powerful rocket ever built.

Spacex launches starship for third time, the rocket, a version of which will eventually carry nasa astronauts to the moon, traveled almost halfway around the earth before it was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere..

“Five, four, three, two, three, one.” “This point, we’ve already passed through Max-Q, maximum dynamic pressure. And passing supersonic, so we’re now moving faster than the speed of sound. Getting those on-board views from the ship cameras. Boosters now making its way back, seeing six engines ignited on ship. Kate, we got a Starship on its way to space and a booster on the way back to the Gulf.” “Oh, man. I need a moment to pick my jaw up from the floor because these views are just stunning.”

The third try turned out to be closer to the charm for Elon Musk and SpaceX, as his company’s mammoth Starship rocket launched on Thursday and traveled about halfway around the Earth before it was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere.

The test flight achieved several key milestones in the development of the vehicle, which could alter the future of space transportation and help NASA return astronauts to the moon.

This particular flight was not, by design, intended to make it all the way around the Earth. At 8:25 a.m. Central time, Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever to fly — lifted off from the coast of South Texas. The ascent was smooth, with the upper Starship stage reaching orbital velocities. About 45 minutes after launch, it started re-entering the atmosphere, heading toward a belly-flop splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Live video, conveyed in near real-time via SpaceX’s Starlink satellites , showed red-hot gases heating the underside of the vehicle. Then, 49 minutes after launch, communications with Starship ended, and SpaceX later said the vehicle had not survived the re-entry, presumably disintegrating and falling into the ocean.

Even so, Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, congratulated SpaceX on what he called a “successful test flight” of the system his agency is counting on for some of its Artemis lunar missions.

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

That reusability gives SpaceX the potential to drive down the cost of lofting satellites and telescopes, as well as people and the things they need to live in space.

Completing most of the short jaunt was a reassuring validation that the rocket’s design appears to be sound. Not only is Starship crucial for NASA’s lunar plans, it is the key to Mr. Musk’s pipe dream of sending people to live on Mars.

For Mr. Musk, the success also harks back to his earlier reputation as a technological visionary who led breakthrough advances at Tesla and SpaceX, a contrast with 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 launched its next-generation rocket, the social media company was dueling with Don Lemon , a former CNN anchor who was sharing clips from a combative interview with Mr. Musk.

SpaceX still needs to pull off a series of formidable rocketry firsts before Starship is ready to head to the moon and beyond. Earlier this week, Mr. Musk said he hoped for at least six more Starship flights this year, during which some of those experiments may occur.

But if it achieves them all, the company could again revolutionize the space transportation business and leave competitors far behind.

Phil Larson, a White House space adviser during the Obama administration who also previously worked on communication efforts at SpaceX, said Starship’s size and reusability had “massive potential to change the game in transportation to orbit. And it could enable whole new classes of missions.”

NASA is counting on Starship to serve as the lunar lander for Artemis III, a mission that will take astronauts to the surface of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. That journey is currently scheduled for late 2026 but seems likely to slide to 2027 or later.

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

Last April, Starship made it off the launchpad, but a cascade of engine failures and fires in the booster led to the rocket’s destruction 24 miles above the Gulf of Mexico.

In November, the second Starship launch traveled much farther. All 33 engines in the Super Heavy booster worked properly during ascent, and after a successful separation, the upper Starship stage nearly made it to orbital velocities. However, both stages ended up exploding.

Nonetheless, Mr. Musk hailed both test flights as successes, as they provided data that helped engineers improve the design.

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

Most of the flight proceeded smoothly, and a number of test objectives were achieved during the flight, like opening and closing the spacecraft’s payload doors, which will be needed to deliver cargo in the future.

SpaceX did not attempt to recover the booster this time, but did have it perform engine burns that will be needed to return to the launch site. However, the final landing burn for the booster, conducted over the Gulf of Mexico, did not fully succeed — an area that SpaceX will attempt to fix for future flights.

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

SpaceX engineers will also have to figure out why Starship did not survive re-entry and make fixes to the design of the vehicle.

Even with the partial success of Thursday’s flight, Starship is far from ready to go to Mars, or even the moon. Because of Mr. Musk’s ambitions for Mars, Starship is much larger and much more complicated than what NASA needs for its Artemis moon landings. For Artemis III, two astronauts are to spend about a week in the South Pole region of the moon.

“He had the low price,” Daniel Dumbacher, the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a former high-level official at NASA, said of Mr. Musk, “and NASA chose to take the risk associated with that configuration hoping that it would work out. And we’ll see if that turns out to be true.”

To leave Earth’s orbit, Starship must have its propellant tanks refilled with liquid methane and liquid oxygen. That will require a complex choreography of additional Starship launches to take the propellants to orbit.

“This is a complicated, complicated problem, and there’s a lot that has to get sorted out, and a lot that has to work right,” Mr. Dumbacher said.

Thursday’s flight included an early test of that technology, moving liquid oxygen from one tank to another within Starship.

Mr. Dumbacher does not expect Starship to be ready by September 2026, the launch date NASA currently has for Artemis III, although he would not predict how much of a delay there might be. “I’m not going to give you a guess because there is way too much work, way too many problems to solve,” he said.

Kenneth Chang and Michael Roston

A rare sight: Starship’s bright orange glow as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.

Just past the 45-minute mark of the Starship vehicle’s journey through space on Thursday, something eerie happened. As it drifted high above Earth’s oceans and clouds, the spacecraft’s silvery exterior was overtaken by a brilliant and fiery orange glow.

Starship re-entering Earth's atmosphere. Views through the plasma pic.twitter.com/HEQX4eEHWH — SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2024

When a spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere, the air beneath it gets hot — hot enough that it turns into a plasma of charged particles as electrons are stripped away from the air molecules. The charged particles create picturesque glows, like neon signs.

But seeing this happen in nearly real-time during a spaceflight is uncommon. That plasma disrupts radio signals, cutting off communication.

Such blackouts happen, for instance, when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule returns to Earth from the International Space Station with its complement of four astronauts. Mission controllers must wait with bated breath to be reassured that the spacecraft’s heat shield has held up and protected the crew during atmospheric re-entry.

Until Starship succumbed to the intense forces of re-entry on Thursday, SpaceX used its Starlink internet satellites to relay the live video feed. The Starlink satellites are in higher orbits, and sending signals upward — away from the plasma — is easier than trying to communicate through it to antennas on the ground.

But Starship wasn’t the only spacecraft in recent weeks to give us a view of plasma heating. Varda Space, a startup that is developing technology for manufacturing in orbit, had cameras on a capsule it landed on Earth on Feb. 21. Before it parachuted to the ground, its Winnebago capsule recorded a day-glow re-entry. The company retrieved the video recording from the capsule and shared it online:

Here's a video of our capsule ripping through the atmosphere at mach 25, no renders, raw footage: pic.twitter.com/ZFWzdjBwad — Varda Space Industries (@VardaSpace) February 28, 2024

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Jeff Bezos’s rocket company could race SpaceX to the moon.

Which billionaire space company will get to the moon first: Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin?

At first glance, SpaceX seems to have a huge head start. It is about to launch the third test flight of Starship. A variation of Starship is scheduled to take NASA astronauts to the surface of the moon as soon as September 2026.

By contrast, Blue Origin has yet to launch anything into orbit, and its contract with NASA for a lunar lander for astronauts is for a mission that is launching in 2030.

But Blue Origin might still get there first. SpaceX faces major challenges with Starship, which is as tall as 16-story building, while Blue Origin plans to send a smaller cargo lander to the moon by the end of next year.

“This lander, we’re expecting to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today,” John Couluris, senior vice president of lunar permanence at Blue Origin, said during a n interview on the CBS News program “60 Minutes” this month.

The first launch of the Mark 1 version of the Blue Moon lander is what Blue Origin calls a “pathfinder” to test technologies like the BE-7 engine, the flight computers, avionics and power systems — the same systems that will be used in the much larger Mark 2 lander that will take astronauts to the moon’s surface.

The Mark 1 lander can carry up to three tons of cargo to the lunar surface, but will be small enough to fit inside one of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets . New Glenn has yet to fly, but the company says its debut journey will occur later this year.

After Blue Moon Mark 1 is launched into an orbit about 125 miles above Earth’s surface, the lander’s BE-7 engine will propel it toward the moon, slowing it down to enter orbit around the moon and then guiding it to the landing on the surface.

The smaller size means that the Mark 1 lander, unlike Starship, will not need to be refueled before leaving Earth orbit. Demonstrating that refueling technology in orbit will be a key test to validate Starship’s design. Refueling will also be needed for the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos have already been beaten to the moon by another billionaire, Kam Ghaffarian , one of the founders of Intuitive Machines, which put a small robotic lander named Odysseus near the lunar south pole in February . That was the first private spacecraft to successfully make it to the moon’s surface in one piece (although its journey had some hiccups ).

As with every American rocket mishap, the Federal Aviation Administration will open an investigation to review what went wrong and what SpaceX needs to do to correct it. But if, as Elon Musk says, there are at least six more Starship flights this year, SpaceX will have opportunities to complete a full test flight.

Starship's third flight went very far, but like its first two flights, it was not a complete success. The landing burn for the Super Heavy booster stage of the rocket — the aim was to “land” it in the Gulf of Mexico — was not fully successful, and the Starship craft did not survive re-entry. But it was marked significant progress, because none of the problems from the earlier flights recurred, and SpaceX engineers now have data to tackle the new problems.

Michael Roston

On the social media site X, Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, congratulated SpaceX on what he called a “successful test flight” of Starship. The agency is counting on Starship to land astronauts on the moon’s surface as part of the Artemis III mission. Another vehicle, the Orion capsule, is to be used to bring those astronauts back to Earth.

SpaceX says Starship did not survive re-entry, but it achieved several key milestones during the flight. That marks significant progress since the second test flight. Elon Musk has said he hopes there will be a half-dozen Starship flights this year.

SpaceX says a dual loss of communication, both through its own Starlink satellites and other forms spacecraft communications with Earth, suggest that Starship did not survive re-entry. They’re still listening to see if radio contact resumes.

Video is gone. Telemetry is also stuck at a speed 25,707 kilometers per hour and an altitude of 65 kilometers. The reason is not clear.

Starship already has private customers booked for deep space trips.

Starship has not yet done a full orbit of the Earth, but SpaceX already has three private astronaut missions on its manifest for the spacecraft.

The first flight with astronauts aboard will be led by Jared Isaacman who previously bought an orbital trip on a Falcon 9 rocket that was known as Inspiration4 .

Then two other Starship flights will travel around the moon and back, one led by Yusaku Maezawa , a Japanese entrepreneur, and the other by Dennis Tito, who was the first private individual to buy a trip to the International Space Station in 2001.

Back in 2018 when Mr. Maezawa signed up for the lunar flyby, Mr. Musk said Starship would be ready by 2023.

Mr. Maezawa later called the mission ‘dearMoon,’ inviting people to apply for a seat on the trip. Last week, he acknowledged it was not going to happen this year.

“We were planning for our lunar orbital mission ‘dearMoon’ to take place in 2023, but seems like it will take a little longer,” he wrote on the social network X. “We’re not sure when the flight will be, but we will give you all an update once we know more.”

SpaceX is apparently also planning uncrewed cargo flights to the surface of the moon with Starship.

In March last year, a small start-up company, Astrolab, announced that it was sending a Jeep Wrangler-size rover to surface in the south polar region of the moon , and the ride would be a cargo Starship flight that would take it there.

SpaceX did not confirm the news.

This appears to be part of the expanding potential market for Starship. SpaceX also plans to use the rocket for launching its second generation of Starlink internet communications satellites .

Starship is re-entering Earth's atmosphere. We’re seeing the heating on the flaps, with video being transmitted to the ground through SpaceX's Starlink satellites. The view is incredible. Usually the plasma disrupts radio transmissions.

SpaceX skipped the restart of one of the Raptor engines on the upper stage of Starship. It did conduct the propellant transfer test and the opening and closing of the payload door, which means the flight achieved some of its experimental objectives during its coast around the Earth, but not others. Next stop: Re-entry through the atmosphere and a hard bellyflop in the Indian Ocean.

The music on the livestream is more old-fashioned than the ambient beats we’re used to during SpaceX video feeds. But there’s nothing old-fashioned about the views in space from the rocket, which are unreal, but have not always been visible as its connection to the ground comes and goes.

During this period of the flight, Starship is scheduled to perform several tests. The first, opening the payload door, is complete. It will also move several tons of liquid oxygen between two tanks within Starship. That’s a preliminary test for future in-orbit refueling between two Starships, which is critical for sending the vehicle to the moon. Finally, Starship will try to restart one of its Raptor engines in the vacuum of space, something it has not done before.

The payload door of the upper Starship rocket stage is now open. That’s how a future Starship will deploy Starlink satellites, and demonstrating that it works was one of the objectives of today's flight.

The engines on the upper-stage of the rocket successfully completed their burn. Starship is now coasting in space, on a trajectory that will re-enter the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.

We were watching the booster attempting to land in the Gulf of Mexico. But the camera feed cut off, and we're not sure what actually happened. The upper stage Starship is still continuing on its trajectory toward the Indian Ocean.

The Super Heavy booster stage of the rocket appears to be headed back to Earth. During the last attempt, the booster exploded at this point, so it looks like SpaceX has fixed that issue.

The large Super Heavy booster stage has separated from the Starship upper stage, which is on its way to space. The flight is looking good.

All 33 Raptor engines in the booster are working fine. So far everything looks good.

Less than 2 minutes until liftoff. Propellant tanks are full, and wind will not prevent an on-time liftoff.

Starship is less than 10 minutes away from its third launch. The countdown is going smoothly.

What will happen during Starship’s third test flight.

For its third test flight, Starship aims to fly part of the way around the Earth, starting from SpaceX’s launch site in Boca Chica Village, Texas, and splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

The earlier test flights — both of which ended in explosions — aimed to come down in waters off Hawaii. SpaceX said it had set the new flight path to allow for safe testing of things it hadn’t done before with the Starship vehicle.

The journey will start at the site that SpaceX calls Starbase, which is a few miles north of where Texas and Mexico meet along the Gulf of Mexico. The rocket, nearly 400 feet tall, will be mounted next to a launch tower that is about 480 feet tall. It will be filled with methane and liquid oxygen propellants during the hours before liftoff.

Three seconds before launch, computers will begin to ignite the 33 engines in the Super Heavy rocket booster beneath Starship.

Starship and Super Heavy will begin their ascent over the Gulf. At 52 seconds into the flight, SpaceX says, the vehicle will experience the heaviest atmospheric stress of its trip, a moment flight engineers call max-q.

If the stainless steel spacecraft survives that stress, the next key moment will occur 2 minutes and 42 seconds into flight, when most of the Super Heavy booster’s engines power down. Seconds later, the upper Starship vehicle will begin “hot-staging,” or lighting up its engines before separating from Super Heavy.

Super Heavy’s journey will end about seven minutes after launch. SpaceX would typically aim to return the massive rocket booster to the launch site for a vertical landing. But for the test flight, the spent Super Heavy will perform a series of maneuvers before firing its engines one last time to slow its descent into the Gulf of Mexico.

As Super Heavy is descending, Starship will be gaining altitude. About eight and a half minutes into its flight, its engines will switch off. It will then begin coasting around the Earth.

While floating through space, Starship will attempt several things that the spacecraft has never done. Nearly 12 minutes into the flight, it will open a door that in the future could deploy satellites and other cargo into space. About 12 minutes later, it will transfer propellants from one tank to another while in space, a technique needed for future journeys to the moon and beyond. Then, 40 minutes into the flight, Starship will relight one if its engines while in space.

If the spacecraft makes it through those experiments, the conclusion of Starship’s journey will start at about the 49-minute mark. The spacecraft is set to pivot horizontally into a belly-flop to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. If it survives the extreme temperatures, Starship will splash down 64 minutes after it left Texas. The company has said in the past that it expects the belly-flop ocean landing to end in an explosion .

After SpaceX completes its testing campaign, future Starship flights will return to the Texas Starbase site after they complete their missions in orbit. SpaceX is also building a launch tower for Starship at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where flights could one day launch and land, including the Artemis III mission that NASA plans to use to return American astronauts to the moon’s surface.

SpaceX has started the company’s official live video stream from Texas, a sign that it is serious about igniting the rocket in about 20 minutes. You can watch it in the video player embedded above.

What went right and wrong during the 2nd Starship test flight.

The second test flight of Starship in November got a lot higher and faster than the first attempt seven months earlier.

During the first launch outside Brownsville, Texas, in April last year, things went wrong from the start — the exhaust of the engines of the Super Heavy booster excavated a hole beneath the launchpad, sending pieces of concrete flying up to three-quarters of a mile away and a plume of dust drifting 6.5 miles, blanketing the nearby town of Port Isabel. Several of the booster engines failed, and the upper stage never separated from the booster.

Instead, the rocket started making loop-de-loops before the flight termination system destroyed it.

During the second test flight , all 33 of the booster engines worked during ascent. A water deluge system protected the launchpad. The upper Starship stage separated from the booster and then made it most of the way to orbital velocity. However, the journeys of both the booster and the upper Starship stage still ended in explosions.

For the booster, as it dropped away from the upper stage, 13 of the 33 engines fired again to guide it toward the landing location. Although this particular booster was not going to be recovered, SpaceX wanted to test the re-entry techniques that are similar to what it currently uses for its smaller Falcon 9 rockets. However, something went wrong. Several engines shut down and then one blew up, causing the destruction of the booster.

In an update posted on the company’s website on Feb. 26 , SpaceX said the most likely cause of the booster failure was a blockage of a filter where liquid oxygen flowed to the engines. The company said it had made design changes to prevent that from happening again.

The upper stage continued upward for seven minutes after stage separation. This was itself an achievement because the company completed a step called hot-staging, during which the upper-stage engines ignite before the stage detaches from the Super Heavy booster.

Because the spacecraft was empty, extra liquid oxygen was loaded to simulate the weight of a future payload it could carry to orbit. But when the extra oxygen was dumped, a fire started, disrupting communication between the spacecraft’s flight computers. The computers shut down the engines and then set off the flight termination system, destroying the spacecraft.

The upper Starship stage reached an altitude of about 90 miles and a speed of about 15,000 miles per hour. For a spacecraft to reach orbit, it needs to accelerate to about 17,000 miles per hour.

Frost lines have appeared on Starship and the Super Heavy booster as methane and liquid oxygen flow into the rocket’s tanks.

It’s sunrise in Cameron County, Texas, but weather reports show cloudy conditions persist. We’ll see if weather is going to keep Starship on the beach, but SpaceX says it has started loading propellants into the rocket.

Launch time is now 9:25 a.m. Eastern. SpaceX says winds are still a concern that could cause a liftoff to be called off, but it will go ahead with loading of propellants in the rocket.

SpaceX pushed the launch time back a little more, to 9:10 a.m. Eastern. They have until 9:50 to try today.

SpaceX has just announced the new target launch time is 9:02 a.m. Eastern, and the company said on X that it is clearing some boats from a safety zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Cameras from a number of space enthusiast websites like NASASpaceflight that are pointing at the rocket show there is still no frost on its side, so the loading of ultracold methane and liquid oxygen propellants has not yet begun.

As SpaceX prepares for its third flight of Starship, other space efforts have experienced difficulties this week. On Wednesday, Kairos, a rocket from a Japanese startup called Space One, exploded moments into its first launch attempt. And Xinhua, a Chinese state news agency, said on Thursday that two Chinese satellites were lost after a rocket failed to reach the planned orbit.

In a posting on the social media site X, SpaceX says that it is aiming for launch at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, or 30 minutes into the 110-minute launch window. There is a 70 percent chance of favorable weather. There have been concerns of high winds, especially at higher altitudes.

What is Starship?

For Elon Musk, Starship is really a Mars ship. He envisions a fleet of Starships carrying settlers to the red planet in the coming years.

And for that eventual purpose, Starship, under development by Mr. Musk’s SpaceX rocket company , has to be big. Stacked on top of what SpaceX calls a Super Heavy booster, the Starship rocket system will be, by pretty much every measure, the biggest and most powerful ever.

It is the tallest rocket ever built — 397 feet tall, or about 90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty including the pedestal.

And it has the most engines ever in a rocket booster: The Super Heavy has 33 of SpaceX’s powerful Raptor engines sticking out of its bottom. As those engines lift Starship off the launchpad in South Texas, they will generate 16 million pounds of thrust at full throttle.

NASA’s new Space Launch System rocket , which made its first flight in November 2022, holds the current record for the maximum thrust of a rocket: 8.8 million pounds. The maximum thrust of the Saturn V rocket that took NASA astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program was relatively paltry: 7.6 million pounds.

An even more transformative feature of Starship is that it is designed to be entirely reusable. The Super Heavy booster is to land much like those for SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rockets, and Starship will be able to return from space belly-flopping through the atmosphere like a sky diver before pivoting to a vertical position for landing.

That means all of the really expensive pieces — like the 33 Raptor engines in the Super Heavy booster and six additional Raptors in Starship itself — will be used over and over instead of thrown away into the ocean after one flight.

That has the potential to cut the cost of sending payloads into orbit — to less than $10 million to take 100 tons to space, Mr. Musk has predicted.

Starship and Super Heavy are shiny because SpaceX made them out of stainless steel, which is cheaper than using other materials like carbon composites. But one side of Starship is coated in black tiles to protect the spacecraft from the extreme heat that it will encounter if it gets far enough in its flight to re-enter the atmosphere.

Here is what to know about Thursday’s SpaceX test flight.

The third try was closer to the charm for Elon Musk and SpaceX, as the company’s flight test of the mammoth Starship rocket launched on Thursday and traveled almost halfway around the Earth before it was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere.

The flight achieved some key milestones in the development of the vehicle, which could alter the future of space transportation and help NASA return astronauts to the moon.

This particular flight did not, by design, make it all the way around the Earth. At 9:25 a.m. Eastern time, Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever to fly, lifted off from the coast of South Texas. About 45 minutes later it started its re-entry, but communications were lost a few minutes after that. The company said the rocket was lost before attempting to splash down in the Indian Ocean, a sign that more work needs to be completed on the vehicle.

That reusability gives SpaceX the potential to drive down the cost of lofting satellites and space telescopes, as well as people and the things they need to live in space.

Here’s what else to know:

Thursday’s flight demonstrated new capabilities for Starship. In addition to reaching orbital speeds, the Starship vehicle opened and closed its payload door and managed to move several tons of liquid oxygen between two tanks within the rocket, a key test needed for future missions.

The Starship system consists of two stages — the Super Heavy rocket booster and the upper-stage spacecraft, which is also called Starship. The company intends both to be fully reusable in the future. Read more about Starship .

Thursday’s launch was the third of Starship. Here’s a recap of what happened last time .

SpaceX prepares third test of Starship rocket

SpaceX is aiming to launch its Starship megarocket on a third test flight Thursday that, if successful, could bolster NASA's ambitions to return astronauts to the moon and transform the commercial spaceflight industry.

The launch will take place from SpaceX’s Starbase test site in Boca Chica, Texas. Liftoff is expected around 8 a.m. ET, but timing is tentative and the company said on its website that “the schedule is dynamic and likely to change.”

The Federal Aviation Administration on March 8 granted a launch license for the test flight, saying that SpaceX "met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements."

This will be the third launch of the almost 400-foot-tall rocket. The booster's debut flight last April ended with the rocket exploding in a fiery display several minutes after liftoff. A second Starship launch in November achieved several key milestones, including separation of the first-stage booster known as Super Heavy and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft, but the company ultimately lost contact with the vehicle .

SpaceX said the third test flight will tackle “a number of ambitious objectives” that build on the lessons learned from the previous outings. For instance, the company is aiming to fire one of Starship’s Raptor engines while in space, open and close the vehicle’s payload door and transfer propellant between two of Starship’s tanks in orbit. Finally, SpaceX is also hoping to show that Starship can carry out a controlled re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere before splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

Each technology demonstration will be key for future missions to the moon and beyond.

Starship is expected to play an important part in NASA’s efforts to return to the moon. The spacecraft was selected by the agency to carry astronauts to the lunar surface during the upcoming Artemis III mission, which could launch in 2026.

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.