Starship, the biggest rocket ever built, finally left the ground on April 20, 2023, and climbed nearly 24 miles above the Gulf of Mexico before ground teams ended the flight early.
See the video below.
Quick Take
- SpaceX launched the fully stacked Starship and Super Heavy booster for the first time from Starbase, Texas, on April 20, 2023.
- The vehicle reached an altitude of about 39 kilometers, the highest any Starship had flown at that point.
- The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had cleared the flight just six days earlier with a five-year launch license.
- Flight controllers triggered the vehicle’s self-destruct system minutes after liftoff when the rocket began tumbling.
A Rocket Unlike Anything Flown Before Leaves The Pad
At 8:33 a.m. Central Time, all 33 engines on the Super Heavy booster fired at once, pushing the 394-foot rocket off the pad at Starbase. SpaceX called it the moment Starship “successfully lifted off from the orbital launch pad for the first time.”
It marked the first time the company flew the booster and the Starship upper stage together as one complete vehicle, a milestone years in the making.
The rocket kept climbing after liftoff, passing through a maneuver called hot staging, where the upper stage engines ignite while still attached to the booster.
Cameras showed the stack continuing upward as it separated stages, a sequence multiple outlets confirmed happened as planned before trouble set in later in the flight.
SpaceX starship lands in fiery blaze in ocean after test flight pic.twitter.com/4ZJICeMa1L
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 28, 2026
Government Approval Cleared The Way For The Attempt
None of this happened without a green light from Washington. The FAA issued SpaceX a launch license on April 14, 2023, just days before the flight, after what the agency called a comprehensive safety review. That license was built to last five years, though it only covered this single flight unless the FAA later approved more.
Reuters described the approval as clearing SpaceX for its “inaugural orbital launch” attempt, language that captured both the ambition of the mission and the fact that it remained, at its core, a test.
The rocket was uncrewed, carried no satellites, and existed purely to gather data on how the massive vehicle performed in real flight conditions.
The Flight Reached New Heights Before It Ended Early
Starship climbed to roughly 39 kilometers, or about 24 miles, above the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX confirmed this was the highest altitude any Starship prototype had reached to that point, a genuine engineering win even though the mission did not go as originally planned.
Ground Teams Made The Call To End The Flight
About four minutes into the flight, the booster and upper stage remained connected when they should have separated cleanly. The stack began tumbling out of control over the Gulf.
SpaceX’s flight termination system then destroyed both the booster and the ship, a safety measure built into the rocket from the start to prevent an uncontrolled vehicle from posing a risk.
The rocket’s return to Earth came in pieces rather than one intact landing. The launch itself also caused significant damage to the pad at Starbase, cracking concrete and sending debris flying across the facility, a separate issue engineers worked to fix before any future attempt.
Why The Distinction Between Liftoff And Orbit Matters
Calling this flight an “orbital launch” was technically the plan’s name, but the mission profile was never designed to send Starship all the way around Earth on a full lap.
It was a suborbital test meant to check ascent, staging, and engine performance, with splashdown planned in the Pacific had everything gone perfectly. Understanding that difference matters for anyone judging what the flight actually proved.
What The Test Confirmed For SpaceX’s Bigger Plans
Elon Musk’s company has treated tests like this one as expected steps in a fast-paced development style, where hardware flies early and often rather than waiting for perfection on paper.
The April 2023 flight gave engineers real data on how 33 engines behave together, how hot staging works in practice, and how the launch pad holds up under that much force.
That data fed directly into design changes for future flights, including pad reinforcements and adjustments to the staging sequence.
The Federal Aviation Administration required an investigation into the mishap before allowing another attempt, a standard process for any test involving unplanned vehicle loss and public safety considerations.
🚀 SpaceX’s Starship reaches orbit for the first time!
SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit for the first time on Monday during its 14th test flight, despite one of its engines shutting down early during the ascent. 🌎🛰️
The spacecraft then deployed 26 next-generation Starlink… pic.twitter.com/fWaSs4qx4L
— Bolt+ (@boltplus) September 29, 2026
Starship’s first flight showed both how far the program had come and how much work remained. The rocket left the ground, climbed higher than any version before it, and gave SpaceX a mountain of engineering data, even as the mission ended with the vehicle’s destruction rather than a clean landing.
Sources:
youtube.com, spacex.com, abcnews.com, spaceflightnow.com, nbcnews.com
