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Starship S39 and Super Heavy booster B19 launched from Boca Chica at 5:30 p.m. against a blue sky for SpaceX’s 12th Starship test flight.
It’s the first Starship flight since Oct. 13 and the first using the newest generation of Starship/Superheavy, the completely redesigned Version 3 (V3).
The planned launch was scrubbed Thursday after onboard sensors repeatedly reset the countdown clock to T-minus, 40 seconds. Flight control was unable to resolve the issue within the necessary window.
The first-stage Super Heavy booster and second-stage Starship successfully separated from each other a few minutes after launch on Friday. However, the Super Heavy shut down its 33 engines prematurely and the booster was unable to execute a planned “boostback” engine burn to redirect it toward a predetermined landing zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
Contact with the booster was lost shortly after a SpaceX livestream commentator noted the vehicle was “coming in hot.”
Starship continued toward suborbit on five of its six Raptor engines. As of 5:45 p.m. ground control was awaiting further word on the status of its suborbital trajectory.
To complete the Flight 12 mission, SpaceX is shooting for an intact reentry of S39 followed by a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean about 200 miles off the coast of Australia, as it has done multiple times with Starship V2, roughly one hour after launch.
Although the eventual goal is to land Starship back at the launch site so it can be used for multiple missions, for now SpaceX continues to commit its very expensive rockets to the deep.
As of 5:45 p.m. Friday, Starship was still on its way to the anticipated soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean about 200 miles off the coast of Australia.