SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

Summary

SpaceX's Starship megarocket took to the skies for the 10th time ever today (Aug. 26), on a bold test flight that marked a big bounceback from recent failures.Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas today at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT; 6:30 p.m. local Texas time). That was two days later than originally planned; an issue with ground systems at Starbase forced a scrub on Sunday (Aug. 24), and bad weather caused another one on Monday (Aug. 25).But it was worth the wait: Starship did everything SpaceX asked it to today, getting the giant vehicle back on track after a string of issues."That was absolutely incredible," SpaceX Build Reliability Engineer Amanda Lee said during live launch commentary. "A huge congrats to all the teams here.""Great work by the SpaceX team!!!" SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X after the flight.Image 1 of 4SpaceX's Starship Flight 10 megarocket launches into space from Starbase, Texas on Aug. 26, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)SpaceX's Starship Flight 10 megarocket launches into space from Starbase, Texas on Aug. 26, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)A view from SpaceX's Starship Flight 10 Super Heavy booster during its "landing" and splashdown in the Gulf of America.(Image credit: SpaceX)A view of Starship in space space during Flight 10.(Image credit: SpaceX)A rocky road recentlyToday's flight was the 10th overall for Starship, which is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, and its fourth of 2025 so far. The year's three previous liftoffs didn't go entirely to plan.The company lost the Ship vehicle, Starship's 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage, less than 10 minutes after liftoff on both Flight 7 and Flight 8, which launched in January and March, respectively. The Ship on Flight 9 in May made it considerably farther, but still fell short of its planned Indian Ocean splashdown: The spacecraft broke apart as it reentered Earth's atmosphere about 45 minutes after liftoff.Breakin...