A SpaceX Super Heavy booster carrying the Starship spacecraft lifts off on its 10th test flight at the company's launch pad in Starbase, Texas, U.S., August 26, 2025. REUTERS/Steve Nesius
Image: REUTERS/Steve Nesius
SpaceX's Starship rocket on Tuesday deployed its first batch of mock Starlink satellites in space and tested new heat shield tiles on its plunge through Earth's atmosphere, clinching development milestones that had been held up by a streak of previous testing failures.
The giant 123 metre-tall Starship system in its tenth test flight lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase facilities in south Texas, followed by its towering Super Heavy booster releasing the Starship upper stage into space three minutes later, dozens of miles above ground.
Cruising in space some 30 minutes into the flight, Starship's "Pez"-like satellite deployment system dispensed eight dummy Starlink satellites for the first time, a key demonstration for a rocket that represents the future of SpaceX's dominant launch business.
Much is riding on the rocket's success. NASA picked Starship to put its first astronauts on the moon's surface since the Apollo programme. And Musk sees Starship, designed to be fully reusable, as core to fulfilling his goal of routinely ferrying humans to Mars.
Starship's blazing-hot supersonic reentry through Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean roughly an hour into the mission put a variety of hexagonal heat shield tiles to the test as billionaire Elon Musk's space company tries to create an exterior shield that requires little to no refurbishment after each use.
Spacecraft that return to Earth have historically required new heat shields or repairs after each mission, given the destructive and brutal erosion that occurs from high-speed atmospheric friction.
The heat shield tiles on NASA's retired Space Shuttle were fit for dozens of missions, though some had to be replaced.
"There are thousands of engineering challenges that remain, for both the ship and the booster, but maybe the single biggest one is the reusable orbital heat shield," Musk said on Monday on a SpaceX live stream.
The mission concluded with a steady, engine-guided vertical landing on the ocean's surface west of Australia.
The 171-foot-tall Starship then toppled over before exploding into a giant fireball, an expected demise likely triggered by its flight termination system.
The test flight showed long-sought progress in SpaceX's test-to-failure development campaign after three previous failures occurred much earlier in flight and on a test stand in Texas.