For years, orbit was the finish line Starship kept sprinting toward and never quite crossed. On Monday, it finally got there, and it nearly didn't. SpaceX's next-generation Starship rocket reached orbit for the first time despite an engine shutting down unexpectedly midflight, then deployed its first batch of new Starlink satellites. The mission was cut short and ended with a controlled, fiery touchdown in the Pacific.

A Mission Cut From 10 Hours to Three

The flight was scheduled to last 10 hours but shrank to three after the engine problem. Launching from Texas, it was the rocket's 14th flight since 2023, as Elon Musk's company plans to put the vehicle into routine use later this year.

Billions Riding on a Single Rocket

SpaceX shares, which had been up nearly 9% from the IPO price, slipped about 1% on Monday. The stakes are enormous: much of the company's market worth, valued at $2 trillion as of Friday's close, and continued investor confidence ride on Starship, designed as the world's first fully reusable spacecraft.

Liftoff From Starbucks... Starbase

The uncrewed, 40-story-tall vehicle, a Super Heavy booster topped by the Starship upper stage, thundered off the launch pad at SpaceX's Starbase complex along the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville. The booster lofted Starship into space, then returned to Gulf waters for an engine-controlled splashdown, after hard landings on two previous missions. SpaceX said some booster engines stopped working during its descent.

The Moment Everything Wobbled

Once in space, one of Starship's three main engines shut down prematurely. SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot told viewers on the live stream the craft would be unable to reach orbit. "The team has made the call not to commit to orbit," Huot said.

A Reversal Minutes Later

Then came the turnaround. Engineers confirmed Starship could still attempt an engine firing to reach orbit, and minutes later it did, like a runner stumbling in the final stretch and still hitting the tape.

Twenty-Six Satellites, One at a Time

In orbit, Starship deployed 26 next-generation Starlink satellites one by one at an altitude of roughly 269 km (161 miles). "All 26 Starlink V3 operational satellites deployed and operating nominally," Musk wrote on X.

A Fiery Farewell in the Pacific

Starship's controlled descent ended with a thruster maneuver that flipped the vehicle vertical so it struck the sea nose-up. Fire engulfed its base as it touched the surface, before it tipped on its side, followed by a large fireball. SpaceX had not planned to recover the spacecraft from the sea.

A Decade-Long Wait

Starship was built to launch Starlink satellites more often and carry future NASA missions to the moon. Reaching orbit, a primary benchmark for any new rocket, was long delayed. Musk once predicted it for 2022, with satellite deployments to follow in 2023. All 13 previous test flights since 2023 stayed suborbital, despite a nearly decade-long development campaign that has cost SpaceX more than $15 billion.

Musk's Sky-High Ambitions

Musk has said he envisions eventually flying hundreds or thousands of Starship missions a year, a pace unprecedented in the space industry. "Starship is 2 to 3 years away from hourly flights," he wrote on X on Sunday.

A Test Flight With Real Cargo

Monday's voyage counted as a test flight even though Starship carried its first orbital payload. Analysts estimate the launch of the new V3 Starlink satellites equals hundreds of millions of dollars in projected revenue for the Starlink unit, based on added customer capacity, underscoring Starship's role in serving the company's profit nucleus.

Ten Times the Data

According to SpaceX, the V3 satellites can handle 10 times more data than the V2 mini-sats launched 20 or 30 at a time on Falcon 9 rockets. Musk wants to launch V3s in batches of 60 per launch once Starship enters routine operation.

From IPO to Orbit

Starship's orbital debut came three months after SpaceX went public in a record-shattering June IPO that made it the sixth-biggest U.S. company by value and turned Musk, who founded it in 2002, into the world's first trillionaire.

The Moon Is Next

Starship is also set to play a pivotal role in NASA's Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon's surface for the first time since 1972 and build a long-term lunar presence as a stepping stone to eventual human exploration of Mars.