SpaceX’s 13th Starship test flight successfully deployed its first third-generation Starlink satellites and completed a simulated landing of the upper stage, but its Super Heavy booster failed during a planned landing burn and exploded on impact with the Gulf of Mexico. The mixed result matters because Starship is intended to make Starlink launches far more capable and cheaper, but repeated booster failures threaten the reusability needed to achieve those savings.

The flight followed an aborted attempt a week earlier caused by engine failures, after which SpaceX replaced six engines; it was also the second Super Heavy problem on the V3 Starship version following a May failure. The upper stage survived re-entry, floated in the Indian Ocean for heat-shield inspection, and communicated with all deployed satellites before they burned up because Starship cannot yet reach orbit. SpaceX says a Starship carrying 60 V3 satellites could deploy up to 20 times the downlink capacity of a Falcon 9 launch, although its shares fell 2% in after-hours trading after the booster failure.