Starship reaches orbit for the first time ever but returns home early

SpaceX‘s Starship reached orbit for the first time on Monday, surviving an early engine shutdown during ascent, and then cutting its test flight short.

The giant rocket lifted off at 7:48 a.m. local time from Starbase, Texas. Moments later, one of the six engines on Starship’s upper stage, known as the ship, quit firing. At first, SpaceX flight controllers seemed to be leaning toward calling off the push to orbit, with host Dan Huot providing live commentary as they weighed the decision.

But after studying the data, they polled “go” for the orbital insertion engine burn. A single engine fired for a few seconds and pushed the ship fast enough to stay in space. 

“That’s the first time we’ve ever said that in this program: ‘Go for orbit,'” said Jake Berkowitz, a SpaceX lead propulsion engineer. “That is a really, really cool thing to hear and obviously means quite a bit for the remainder of this mission.”

Reaching orbit moves Starship from a series of shorter test flights toward sustained flight around Earth. Until Monday, every Starship flight followed a short arc that used gravity to drop the ship back into the ocean. In orbit, a spacecraft moves so fast that Earth curves away beneath it as quickly as gravity pulls it down, keeping it aloft to circle the planet. The milestone advances Starship’s development toward refueling in space and full reusability, which SpaceX needs for its plans to fly to the moon and Mars. But the test, which was supposed to see the ship circle Earth six times before returning, ended about three hours into flight, without a clear explanation.

The engine shutdown was the first obstacle. Huot told viewers the team had decided “not to commit to orbit” and would send the ship down in the Indian Ocean instead. Then he said controllers were reassessing the situation.

The engine that quit belonged to a set built for the thin air of space, and the ship didn’t need that set for the rest of the flight. The team focused on the ship’s three center engines — the ones it needs to reach orbit and later leave it. Those engines continued to look healthy, Huot said.

“You’re getting this in real time as I’m starting to see it,” he said, “so we are not giving up yet.”

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Before the ship reached orbit, the rocket’s first stage, a booster called Super Heavy, also did its job. It flipped, fired its engines to head back toward Texas, and made what the hosts called a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. That was an improvement over the previous flight this summer, in which the booster hit the water hard.

After reaching orbit, the test was meant to continue for about nine more hours. The mission would conclude by relighting a single engine to slow down and drop out of orbit. Instead, flight controllers took the first available deorbit opportunity to bring the ship back to Earth. The test lasted about three hours. Commentators did not immediately share a reason for the decision.

The ship is expected to plunge back through the atmosphere, where its exterior will heat to thousands of degrees, relying on heat-resistant tiles for protection. SpaceX added extra pins to hold tiles in place and closed gaps where superheated gas had slipped behind them on the last flight.

If all goes as planned, Starship will splash down in the Pacific Ocean far off the coast of Chile. Despite the early return, hosts called the test “wildly successful.” 

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