SpaceX’s First Starship V3 Test Reaches Key Milestones; Booster Lost, Upper Stage Destroyed After Splashdown

SpaceX’s first test flight of its redesigned Starship V3 rocket completed most of its main objectives Thursday evening, even though the company lost the Super Heavy booster during its return attempt and the upper-stage ship was destroyed after splashdown.

The mission, known as Starship Flight 12, lifted off at about 6:30 p.m. EDT Thursday, or 22:30 UTC, from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas. It was the 12th integrated Starship test flight overall and the first to use the new Version 3, or Block 3, configuration — a larger, more powerful variant that coverage described as standing about 408 feet, or 124 meters, tall. The debut flight also marked the first use of Starbase’s newer Pad 2, or OLP-2, for a V3 launch. SpaceX flew Super Heavy Booster 19 and Ship 39, the first V3 prototypes to reach flight.

The launch met several of its biggest goals from the start. Starship cleared the pad, climbed out from South Texas and completed stage separation, allowing the booster and upper stage to continue their planned paths. During ascent, however, one Raptor engine on the booster shut down, and one of Ship 39’s six Raptor engines also went offline. The mission still stayed within its planned general trajectory. After separation, the Super Heavy booster began a boost-back burn — the maneuver that helps steer it toward a controlled return — but did not complete it. It fell into the Gulf of Mexico instead of being recovered. As SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said on the company’s live commentary, as quoted by Space.com, “The booster didn't complete its full boost back ... Its mission ended a little bit early, but landed in the clear area that we had set in advance.”

Even with the booster lost, the upper stage completed much of the flight profile SpaceX had set out to test. About 17 minutes after launch, Ship 39 deployed 22 payloads: 20 mock Starlink satellites and two modified Starlink spacecraft equipped with imaging sensors to capture views of Starship’s exterior and heat shield during flight and reentry. The ship then carried out its reentry sequence and performed a landing-burn simulation using two engines. It had originally been expected to use three, but one engine had shut down earlier in ascent. SpaceX also skipped a planned in-space Raptor relight test because of that earlier engine loss. After splashdown, Ship 39 tipped over and was destroyed, a result postflight coverage said was expected for this test profile.

That mixed outcome still makes Flight 12 a consequential milestone for SpaceX. Starship is the company’s fully reusable heavy-lift launch system under development for deep-space missions and commercial flights, and NASA plans to use a Starship-derived vehicle as a lunar lander for its Artemis moon program. Starship’s integrated flight campaign began in 2023, but Thursday’s mission was the first test of the upgraded V3 generation. The debut did not bring both stages home, but it did deliver data on launch, stage separation, payload deployment, heat-shield imaging and reentry performance — a substantial result for the first flight of a significantly redesigned vehicle.