STARBASE: SpaceX’s Starship rocket roared into space from Texas on Tuesday but spun out of control about halfway through its flight without achieving some of its most important testing goals, bringing fresh engineering hurdles to CEO Elon Musk’s increasingly turbulent Mars rocket programme.

The 400-foot tall (122-metre) Starship rocket system, the core of Musk’s goal of sending humans to Mars, lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase, Texas, launch site, flying beyond the point of two previous explosive attempts earlier this year that sent debris streaking over Caribbean islands and forced dozens of airliners to divert course.

Musk says fuel tank leak caused rocket’s failure

For the latest launch, the ninth full test mission of Starship since the first attempt in April 2023, the upper-stage cruise vessel was lofted to space atop a previously flown booster — a first such demonstration of the booster’s reusability.

But SpaceX lost contact with the 232-foot lower-stage booster during its descent before it plunged into the sea, rather than making the controlled splashdown the company had planned.

Starship, meanwhile, continued into suborbital space but began to spin uncontrollably roughly 30 minutes into the mission. The errant spiraling came after SpaceX canceled a plan to deploy eight mock Starlink satellites into space — the rocket’s “Pez” candy dispenser-like mechanism failed to work as designed.

“Not looking great with a lot of our on-orbit objectives for today,” SpaceX broadcaster said.

Musk was scheduled to deliver an update on his space exploration ambitions in a speech from Starbase following the test flight.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2025