space x began its 15th Starship test flight on Friday. This is the company’s first attempt to capture both the rocket’s superheavy booster and upper spacecraft at its Starbase, Texas, launch site.
The plane took off at 4:47 p.m. local time, 5:47 p.m. ET. Early Friday morning, SpaceX received clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration. Hours later, the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop order after receiving reports of a communications outage that affected “multiple” air traffic control centers. An FAA spokesperson told CNBC that SpaceX’s license was not affected by the grounding.
SpaceX, which began test flights of its massive Starship rocket in 2023, has scrapped plans to recover and reuse its boosters, instead opting to send them flying out into the ocean.
Starship’s success is critical to Elon Musk’s company and its ambitions to eventually lift cargo and people to the surface of the moon or Mars. In the short term, SpaceX needs to send more satellites into orbit to expand its Starlink satellite internet service, which is currently the company’s revenue center.
With Friday’s test flight, SpaceX plans to release a batch of new Starlink V3 satellites into orbit. The company’s satellite fleet already includes more than 11,000 operating satellites in low Earth orbit. A single Starship rocket is capable of placing up to 60 Starlink v3 satellites into orbit, which is about 20 times the capacity of the previous Falcon 9 rocket, the company said.
In its last Starship test flight, the company released 26 Starlink v3 satellites, and on Friday’s test flight it planned to release 26 more with the goal of “making Starlink 51% of the internet,” SpaceX said in a post on X.
When it comes to launches, “SpaceX is likely a full decade ahead of its peers in this area,” William Blair analysts wrote in a note Friday. “Even if tonight’s fishing fails, a few months’ delay is not that significant.”
Meanwhile, SpaceX is facing new criticism over restrictions placed on Ukraine’s StarShield satellite internet service. Starshield is built on Starlink technology and is the military layer of SpaceX’s satellite internet service.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his country’s military had again experienced Starshield restrictions without warning, compromising its ability to defend against Russia’s ongoing air attacks. Similar restrictions were temporarily imposed on Ukraine’s StarShield last month.
Some U.S. senators denounced the restrictions and called on Congress to investigate SpaceX.
