Starship Finally Takes a Lap Around Earth. Then a Balky Engine Sends It Home Early

SpaceX's megarocket reached orbit and delivered its first real cargo. The engine that nearly stopped it is now NASA's problem, too.

For three years, SpaceX flew Starship on a leash. Every test flight followed a deliberately suborbital path, ensuring the ship would fall into the ocean even if engineers lost control. That was a sensible precaution for a vehicle that has broken apart in flight more than once. On Monday, SpaceX finally let go of the leash.

The company’s 14th test flight put Starship into orbit for the first time. However, despite the milestone, not everything went as planned. An engine problem cut the mission short and left NASA with some uncomfortable questions.

The flight began at Starbase in Texas, where the Super Heavy booster lit its 33 engines. This was the upgraded third-generation booster, and the plan was to send the behemoth ship six times around Earth over nearly 10 hours, ending with a splashdown near Chile.

Minutes into the climb, one of the ship’s Raptor vacuum engines shut down prematurely. Vacuum Raptors have oversized nozzles built to wring maximum efficiency out of propellant in the near-emptiness of space. Starship’s first engine burn put it on the same kind of safe, suborbital path as earlier flights. Only after that did controllers have to decide whether to commit to the burn that would push it into orbit. After several tense minutes, they gave the go-ahead, and approximately 26 minutes after liftoff the ship reached orbit.

Meanwhile, the booster splashed down off the Texas coast after a simulated landing burn.

For the first time, Starship carried working satellites instead of dummy payloads. The ship released 26 third-generation Starlink satellites, and Musk later said on X that they were operational.

Three of those satellites carried cameras to photograph the ship’s heat shield, effectively turning them into paparazzi for the ship that had just launched them. The heat shield matters a great deal: Starship is meant to be fully reusable, meaning it must survive reentry without a rebuild each time.

Although it was largely a success, SpaceX cut the flight short because of the engine problem. The company said it shortened the time in orbit out of caution, and the ship splashed down north of Hawaii about three hours after launch. Just before touching the water, it relit its engines, flipped upright, and sent back video of the approaching ocean. Then it tipped over and burst into flames, a rougher finish than July’s flight.

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Resilience or red flag?

You can read the engine failure two ways. Optimists will point out that the ship lost an engine and still reached orbit and delivered its payload. That’s exactly the kind of margin you want in a vehicle that may one day carry people.

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Pessimists will point out that a Raptor misbehaved again. Engine and propulsion problems have contributed to several earlier setbacks, including an engine that didn’t ignite as planned on the 12th flight in May.

Which reading wins depends on the investigation. In a Reuters story, according to aerospace engineer Dean Sladen of Accu Components, it comes down to whether this was “a one-off failure of a single part” or a design flaw that requires fleet-wide upgrades.

Starship isn’t just a satellite launcher. SpaceX is building a lunar lander based on it, and that lander would use the same engine system to carry astronauts to and from the Moon’s surface.

The schedule is tight. Artemis III has become an Earth-orbit rehearsal, planned for as soon as next summer. The actual first crewed landing comes on a later mission, which NASA officially wants to fly by 2028, a target widely seen as a stretch, in a race against China’s plans for 2030.

NASA is hedging its bets. Last December, Isaacman said the agency would use whichever lander is ready first, which opened the door to Blue Origin’s more conventional Blue Moon.

Reaching orbit is the entrance exam. The Moon mission is a much longer list of tests. Before the lander can meet NASA’s Orion capsule in lunar orbit and ferry astronauts down, it has to be refueled in space by several tanker flights, a feat no one has done at this scale. SpaceX also still has to catch the upper stage with its launch tower, and any engine fix that delays future flights pushes back NASA’s timeline.

Each of those flights depends on engines lighting when told to and staying lit until told to stop. Starship has proved it can reach orbit. Next, it has to prove it can do so reliably, on schedule, with every engine running.