On December 9th at 22:45 UTC, SpaceX did a suborbital test of their Starship at their compound at Boca Chica, Texas.

Starship SN8’s twelve and a half kilometer hop was successful, mostly. The shiny steel cylinder reached altitude and hung in the air on one engine for several moments.  After the engine cut off, it looked like it was going to fall out of the sky, but instead, the craft initiated its flip-and-belly-flop maneuver. This was the first time this maneuver was demonstrated in a real vehicle. After a controlled glide back to Earth, the engines reignited and flipped the craft upright.

Unfortunately, the engines lost thrust, and SN8 hit the ground a little too fast and exploded – right in the center of the landing pad. The SpaceX live stream showed the smoking remains and signed off with “Awesome Test, congrats Starship team”. The whole flight lasted less than seven minutes.

Afterward, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to explain: Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed!

Bonus fact: The engine exhaust turned green shortly before the impact as a result of being fuel starved. The green color comes from the copper lining of the combustion chamber burning as a result of a lack of fuel.

More Information

SpaceX Starship info page 

NASA Spaceflight article