In addition to a near-perfect launch, the craft flew for nearly an hour after lifting off from SpaceX’s private launch site in South Texas near the Gulf of Mexico at 9:25 a.m. Eastern. All 33 of the booster’s engines ignited successfully, and after nearly three minutes, the Starship spacecraft separated and began a journey across the globe powered by its six engines.

The mission was eagerly awaited by NASA, which is investing $4 billion in developing Starship, which it intends to use to transport astronauts to the moon in the first two human landings since the Apollo era.

The company already has several other rockets under production and hopes to fly again soon, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said.\

On this flight, the rocket achieved a speed of more than 16,000 mph, which would have allowed the spacecraft to enter orbit around Earth. Instead, SpaceX commanded the spacecraft to reenter the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. After slamming into the thickening atmosphere, it generated heat of about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit and did not survive. The booster was also lost after it began to tumble as it fell back to Earth over the Gulf of Mexico.

Still, it was the most successful Starship flight by far.

“It’s incredible to see how much further we got this time around,” Dan Huot, a SpaceX spokesman, said during the company’s live broadcast.

With each flight, SpaceX has gotten better at flying Starship, learning from each test mission and then using the data it collects to continue to tweak the vehicle’s hardware, software and ground systems. The vehicle, collectively called Starship, is composed of the Super Heavy booster and a spacecraft that sits on top.

“Each of these flight tests continue to be just that: a test,” SpaceX said in a statement before Thursday’s flight. “They aren’t occurring in a lab or on a test stand but are putting flight hardware in a flight environment to maximize learning.”

During the first flight, in April 2023, several of the main engines failed during liftoff and more failed as it ascended. The force of the rocket blew up its launchpad and sent debris flying into the Texas shoreline. That triggered a lawsuit from environmentalists, who are concerned about the massive rocket’s impact on the surrounding area.

For the second flight, SpaceX installed a water deluge system to its pad, which dampened the blast, and made upgrades to the rocket’s engines. The vehicle made it through stage separation, and the upper-stage engines fired as well. But as the booster started to ignite 13 of its engines to fly the rocket back to Earth, one engine failed, “quickly cascading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly” — the phrase SpaceX uses to describe the loss of a vehicle. The spacecraft was lost after a leak led to a fire and its autonomous onboard flight termination system destroyed the vehicle.

After the flight, the FAA oversaw SpaceX’s investigation and, in February, said it had accepted the company’s report. As a result, the FAA required SpaceX to complete 17 corrective actions, which included hardware redesigns, updates to engine-control algorithms and installation of fire protection measures.

SpaceX said that “upgrades derived from the flight test will debut on the next Starship and Super Heavy vehicles.”