Starship | Integrated Flight Test
Status: Failure | Launched: Apr 20, 2023 13:33 UTC
Failure reason: After liftoff, the vehicle sustained fires from leaking propellant in the aft end of the Super Heavy booster, severing connection with the vehicle’s primary flight computer. This led to a loss of communications to most of the booster engines and eventually control of the vehicle. After the second stage failed to separate from the first stage, the vehicle reached an apogee of ~39km before tumbling downwards until the flight termination system was activated. Unexpected severe damage was also imparted on the launch pad.
Launch Provider & Rocket
- Provider: SpaceX (Commercial)
- Rocket: Starship V1 — Starship family
Mission
Maiden flight of the two-stage Starship launch vehicle. The booster was supposed to separate 170 seconds into flight and return to land approximately 32 km off the shore in the Gulf of Mexico. The second stage would have followed a suborbital trajectory and performed an unpowered splashdown approximately 100 km off the northwest coast of Kauai (Hawaii). A launch failure was experienced before stage separation.
- Type: Test Flight
- Orbit: Suborbital (Sub)
Launch Site
- Pad: Orbital Launch Pad 1
- Location: SpaceX Starbase, TX, USA
- View on map
Program
- SpaceX Starship — The SpaceX Starship is a fully reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX since 2012, as a self-funded private spaceflight project. The second stage of the Starship — is designed as a long-duration cargo and passenger-carrying spacecraft. It is expected to be initially used without any booster stage at all, as part of an extensive development program to prove out launch-and-landing and iterate on a variety of design details, particularly with respect to the vehicle's atmospheric reentry. (Wikipedia)
Launch data sourced automatically from the Launch Library 2 API. Last refreshed: 2026-08-23T21:01:01.732974+00:00.