SpaceX Starship orbital launch live updates

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX after its first integrated flight test.

“All great achievements in history have required some degree of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward,” he said. in a tweet“We look forward to everything SpaceX has learned, the next flight test and beyond.”

— Sarah Salinas

SpaceX said the company will review data from the launch to build on its next attempt.

“In a test like this, success comes from what we learn. Today’s test will help improve Starship’s credibility.”

— Michael Sheets

Musk tweeted shortly after the three-minute flight, saying the company had “learned a lot” and hinted that “the next test launch is in a few months.”

— Sarah Salinas

Here’s a launch from South Padre Island, about 5 miles from the launch pad.

— Michael Sheets

To be clear, the first attempt to reach space on a starship had no one on board. The company’s management has previously emphasized that SpaceX expects people to fly hundreds of Starship missions before launching them on rockets.

— Michael Sheets

Before its in-flight failure, Starship achieved one important milestone. That is, the Super Heavy Booster has successfully separated from the rocket, flipped over and started its return to Earth.

— Sarah Salinas

According to Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, the SpaceX rocket flew to a maximum altitude of 39 kilometers (about 127,000 feet) before exploding. That distance falls short of the 100-kilometer mark, which is internationally recognized as the boundary of space.

— Michael Sheets

The Starship rocket suffered an in-flight failure about four minutes after its historic launch. In a tweet, the company said it experienced an “unscheduled rapid disintegration” indicating that the rocket had been destroyed.

— Sarah Salinas

A SpaceX live stream showed the first in-flight images from the flight about two minutes after launch.

— Sarah Salinas

The Starship took off and the Super Heavy boosters fired the Raptor engines and took off from the pad.

— Michael Sheets

SpaceX engineers keep a 40-second countdown clock to check the system.

— Sarah Salinas

I had one minute left, so I put on my earplugs.

The company warned that the noise of the rocket booster’s 33 engines firing simultaneously could be heard in nearby counties. SpaceX says that “what an individual experiences depends on the weather and other conditions,” but the bottom line is that a towering rocket can be very loud.

— Michael Sheets

Insprucker said one stage of propellant loading was completed, saying: “In the second stage, we will finish loading the header tanks.

The remaining stages are expected to finish loading on T-3, and Insprucker said, “We haven’t heard that it needs to be put on hold right now.”

— Sarah Salinas

SpaceX’s principal integration engineer, John Insprucker, said at T-12 that the SpaceX team had nothing but “good news” and that there were no serious problems with the rocket.

“Everything is on track for an on-time launch,” he said.

— Sarah Salinas

The countdown to launch fell short of the T-15. This is the moment SpaceX called off Monday’s attempt because a pressure valve froze.

— Sarah Salinas

Fully stacked on Super Heavy boosters, the Starship is 394 feet tall and nearly 30 feet in diameter, making it the tallest rocket ever built.

The Super Heavy Booster is the beginning of a rocket’s journey into space. At its base are his 33 Raptor engines, and in total he produces 16.7 million pounds of thrust. That’s double his 8.8 million pounds of thrust from NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which first launched late last year.

The Starship itself has six Raptor engines, three of which are used in Earth’s atmosphere and three for operations in the vacuum of space.

— Michael Sheets

SpaceX is loading its Super Heavy boosters with liquid oxygen and liquid methane, the propellants the company uses to fuel its rocket engines.

In total, rockets are loaded with over 10 million pounds of propellant.

— Michael Sheets

Near the amphitheater on the southern tip of South Padre Island, I sit in a temporary bleachers with other members of the press, watching the starship on the launch pad about five miles away.

For reference, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center press site is just over three miles from the launch pad in Florida.

It’s been a little foggy here near Starbase, and SpaceX said the launch team is “keeping an eye on the weather.”

— Michael Sheets

SpaceX has a 62-minute window to launch Starship today. This window opens at 9:28 AM ET and lasts until 10:30 AM ET.

— Michael Sheets