Space Exploration Technologies Corp. put its Starship rocket into orbit for the first time today on the vehicle’s 14th test flight.

Liftoff came at 8:49 a.m. EDT from Starbase in South Texas. The upper stage was back down in the Pacific a little over three hours later, well ahead of schedule.

One of the six Raptor engines on the Starship upper stage shut down early during ascent. After reviewing the telemetry, SpaceX’s flight control team judged the ship otherwise healthy. About 25 minutes into the flight, one Raptor fired to put it into a circular orbit roughly 170 miles up. The Super Heavy booster, which SpaceX did not try to catch this time, lost at least one engine of its own before a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

Once in orbit, Starship released 26 third-generation Starlink satellites over about half an hour. Three of the satellites carried cameras to photograph the ship’s heat shield tiles, and SpaceX rates each new unit at about 1 terabit per second of added network capacity. “First orbital flight of Starship successful!” Chief Executive Elon Musk wrote on X.

The flight plan had called for almost 10 hours aloft and a splashdown off Chile, with a backup reentry zone north of Hawaii held in reserve. Mission managers switched to the backup once the satellites were deployed, according to Spaceflight Now. The ship made its deorbit burn at about 11 a.m. EDT and splashed down shortly before noon. The vehicle then tipped over and exploded as residual propellant ignited.

None of the 13 earlier flights, the first of which launched in April 2023, reached orbit. The current version of Starship, known as V3, debuted on Flight 12 in May with a liftoff from a new pad at Starbase. On Flight 13 in July, SpaceX deployed 20 production Starlink V3 satellites on a suborbital path and relit a Raptor engine in space. The ship flown today carried a reworked heat shield. Extra ablative material covers part of its aft section, according to NASASpaceFlight, and redesigned curved tiles are meant to cut heating in the gaps between them.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman called the flight a “gorgeous launch” in a post on X. A version of Starship is one of two landers his agency is counting on to put astronauts back on the moon. Artemis III is due next year, when four astronauts will fly an Orion capsule to meet prototypes from SpaceX and Blue Origin LLC in Earth orbit. The landing itself is set for Artemis IV in 2028. No Starship has refueled another in orbit yet, and each lander could need as many as 15 tanker launches before leaving for the moon.

When SpaceX reported its first quarterly results as a public company in August, the space segment that houses Starship showed a $542 million operating loss and $1.08 billion in research and development spending.

SpaceX expects to launch Starship from Florida for the first time late this year or early next, Spaceflight Now reported.

Photo: SpaceX/X