SpaceX launches extra powerful Super Heavy-Starship test flight as company races toward IPO

SpaceX successfully launched its Version 3 Super Heavy-Starship rocket from Texas on Friday in a critical test flight for the company’s future.

The 407-foot-tall V3 Starship rocket, designed as the most powerful ever built, blasted off into space from the company’s Starbase facility. There were some issues with the booster, which crashed into the Gulf of America, but the upper-stage spacecraft made it past Earth’s atmosphere. The vehicle then splashed down into the Indian Ocean.

Musk congratulated SpaceX on the launch, saying, “You scored a goal for humanity.”

The mission marked the 12th test flight of the fully reusable rocket that Musk’s company is building to transport people to Mars, but will first compete to send astronauts to the moon in future NASA Artemis lunar missions.

The launch, as NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman put it after the test flight, brings Elon Musk‘s aerospace company “one step closer” to the moon and Mars.