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    • A look back at previous tests
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    A look back at previous tests

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    The spaceship is an integral part of NASA’s plans to send humans back to the moon and Elon Musk’s grand vision to eventually colonize Mars.

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    • SpaceX has aborted a capture attempt of the booster’s returning rocket stage, which the company first successfully performed in October.
    • But the craft’s upper stage continued its successful series of crashes into the Indian Ocean after a launch from Starbase in Texas.
    • NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called the launch a “success” in a post on Musk’s social media platform

    SpaceX’s massive Starship vehicle that will one day propel humans deep into the cosmos launched Tuesday night for its final test flight as President-elect Donald Trump looked on.

    Trump often raved at his rallies about the 400-foot behemoth, consisting of both a spacecraft and a rocket, and about SpaceX’s successful capture of the returning booster stage during the October demonstration. But Elon Musk’s company was able to repeat the complex maneuver in its sixth and most recent unmanned test, which Trump personally witnessed from Texas.

    That hardly made the test a failure. The vehicle’s upper stage continued its successful series of crashes in the Indian Ocean after all of SpaceX’s 33 Raptor engines powered the Starship from the Starbase near the city of Brownsville.

    NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called the launch a “success” in a post on Musk’s social media platform

    The spaceship is an integral part of NASA’s plans to send humans back to the moon and Musk’s grand vision to eventually colonize Mars. As part of NASA’s ambitious Artemis campaign, the space agency’s first lunar program since the Apollo era of the 1970s, NASA is paying SpaceX $4 million to develop a spacecraft that will carry astronauts safely from Earth orbit to the surface of the moon can transport.

    Musk has also previously expressed his vision of sending the first spaceships to Mars in late 2026, the next time Earth and Mars align, followed by crewed flights in 2028.

    As SpaceX prepares for more test flights in 2025, here’s what you need to know about what happened on all previous launches that started more than a year ago.

    Spaceship test flight: SpaceX Starship crashes after sixth launch; booster catch canceled

    November 19, 2024: Trump present; booster catch canceled

    The latest Starship flight test took place in front of Trump, who has made a series of public appearances with Musk as the new president signals the tech billionaire will play a major role in his administration.

    The spacecraft began its planned trajectory over the Gulf of Mexico at 5:00 PM ET, following a similar suborbital path as previous flights. The vehicle’s 72-meter-long ‘Super Heavy’ rocket booster splashed down off the coast of Texas seven minutes after launch.

    The spacecraft also includes the 165-foot Starship spacecraft itself, which flew for more than an hour before crashing into the Indian Ocean at 6:05 PM ET.

    As for the booster, SpaceX officials had hoped to replicate what they first did in the previous test, autonomously sending it back to the landing pad before catching it with two giant mechanical arms. But during the flight, officials chose to skip the complex maneuver for safety reasons.

    In an update on its website, SpaceX attributed the decision to data from “automated health checks” of hardware on both the launch and capture towers. SpaceX has not yet provided a more specific reason why the booster capture was called off.

    The company has also reignited its Raptor engines in space to attempt an orbital burn – a crucial maneuver to one day return a vehicle to the ground. Tuesday’s launch also included plans to fly the ship at a “higher angle of attack” to test what it can handle in future landings.

    October 13, 2024: SpaceX captures rocket booster in mechanical arm

    For its fifth test flight, the empty Starship took off on October 13 from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. As in previous tests, the vehicle flew into orbit over the Gulf of Mexico.

    In a first, the Super Heavy first stage booster flew back to the launch pad. SpaceX had built a launch tower with huge mechanized metal arms, nicknamed ‘chopsticks’, which then managed to catch the descending booster in a daring maneuver.

    The ability to capture the Starship booster is crucial for SpaceX, giving the company a fully reusable vehicle that can fly again.

    Before the booster descended and landed, it had pushed the spacecraft up into the atmosphere, sending it flying more than 130 miles (210 kilometers) high.

    An hour after launch, Starship made a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean. Ahead of the demo, SpaceX engineers reworked the rocket’s heat shield and replaced the entire thermal protection system with newer tiles and a backup ablative layer.

    June 6, 2024: Starship completes first-ever successful landing burn

    The craft experienced successful separation from the booster, with 32 of the 33 engines igniting correctly during launch, approximately seven minutes into flight.

    The booster successfully returned to Earth and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico as planned and all six of Starship’s engines successfully placed it into orbit.

    Heat shields protecting the spacecraft’s exterior took a hit, with at least one throwing debris into one of the live-streaming remote cameras, but it managed a successful re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

    About an hour and six minutes into the flight, Starship completed its first-ever landing and crashed into the Indian Ocean to loud applause.

    March 14, 2024: The spaceship reaches space before getting lost in the atmosphere

    In the third test, the Starship managed to separate from the booster and enter orbit within minutes of launch, where it performed a series of in-flight tests as it flew through space.

    Video of its flight, sent back to Earth using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, was able to capture the beginning of the spacecraft’s reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. However, the signal was lost about an hour into the mission before SpaceX concluded that the spacecraft likely broke up.

    Despite Starship’s failure to complete its planned landing in the Indian Ocean, SpaceX said the rocket still achieved a number of key milestones, including successfully firing the 33 Raptor engines in the booster and opening a loading door.

    November 18, 2023: Starship advances in the second test, but still explodes

    During the Starship’s second launch test, the rocket survived longer and reached some milestones, but ultimately exploded.

    The booster successfully separated from the rocket, which reached space before ground crews lost communication with it after nine minutes. Three minutes later, SpaceX lost both the booster and the spacecraft in two explosions.

    Rather than seeing it as a setback, SpaceX expressed optimism about the phase separation, while saying the rest would just be valuable data to help them fix what went wrong.

    April 20, 2023: The spaceship explodes minutes after its inaugural launch

    The Starship got off to a rocky start when it exploded just four minutes into its first test flight on April 20.

    The spacecraft was able to launch at SpaceX’s private Starbase location, but telemetry data showed that several of the spacecraft’s engines failed, causing the explosion before the booster and spacecraft could even be separated.

    SpaceX later confirmed that the rocket’s flight termination system had activated to destroy the tumbling vehicle before it met its fiery end.

    Contributions: Anthony Robledo, USA TODAY

    Eric Lagatta covers the latest and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

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