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Starship is still cruising along at more than 16,000 miles per hour, but it’s beginning to dip back down into the thick inner band of Earth’s atmosphere. The extreme pressure and friction compresses the air molecules in front of Starship, creating a glowing plasma that is the signature of the stretch of flight known as reentry. Starship can heat up to more than 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit during this process.

The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster reached Max Q, or the point of maximum dynamic pressure during a rocket launch. Essentially, it means the vehicle is still traveling really fast when the atmosphere is very thick, putting the highest strain on the spacecraft. Safely passing through the Max Q milestone is always a key point in any spaceflight mission.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk just popped into the livestream — perhaps by accident. Musk popped into frame with his arms splayed, asking how the webcast was going. The webcast hosts appeared to be surprised by his sudden arrival, and when they told Musk they were live in the moment, Musk replied “no way!” He added that he’d be watching the launch from outside.

• SpaceX’s Starship megarocket — the most powerful launch vehicle ever built — successfully completed an hour-long test flight. • The company has had a rocky year of test missions with this generation of Starship prototype, called Version 2. • This mission marks the second clean test run for Version 2, following a successful showing during its last test mission in August. Earlier this year, however, Starship Version 2 suffered three in-flight failures and an explosive accident during ground testing. • SpaceX is racing to develop the vehicle to complete a moon landing for NASA, planned for 2027, amid a new space race. • Today’s test mission is expected to be the last for the current iteration of Starship prototypes. The company has said it will debut a scaled up Version 3 for the next flight.

SpaceX’s Dan Huot just warned: “Do not be surprised if this is not a very smooth flight on the way down.” He noted that SpaceX intentionally removed heat shield tiles at vulnerable parts of the Starship spacecraft. The idea here is to pinpoint exactly how and where the vehicle might fail — or if engineers will be surprised by Starship’s robustness. While smooth flights are ideal, SpaceX is emphasizing that, because these are tests, engineers want to identify failure points as well. Such data can be useful because it informs workers of what can or should be added or subtracted from Starship — a key consideration when every ounce of hardware affects the overall efficiency of the vehicle.

The Starship spacecraft, soaring through space at near orbital speeds, just began a key test for today’s mission. A large slat on the side of the vehicle — a hatch called a “payload door” — opened up and began spitting out fake satellites, marking the second time SpaceX has conducted such a test. Unlike other rockets, which deploy satellites out of a nose cone, Starship has a lateral door that must open up to allow the satellites to eject into space. The mock satellites are meant to simulate SpaceX’s latest version of Starlink internet-beaming satellites. (And the dummy satellites on board Starship today will not enter orbit. They’ll fall back to Earth because Starship itself is on a suborbital trajectory for this test mission.)

The Super Heavy rocket booster just met its watery demise, landing in the Gulf waters just east of SpaceX’s launch facilities. SpaceX did not expect to safely land or recover the Super Heavy during this test mission, as the company is stress testing the rocket and trying out some complex maneuvers that engineers hope will offer useful data on how to handle future versions of the vehicle more efficiently. Despite testing the limits, Super Heavy hit its mark and appeared to perform well — or, at least, did not crash-land or explode. “So far so good for today — that was incredible,” said Jake Berkowitz, a lead propulsion engineer for SpaceX’s Starship rocket engines. Cheers from employees erupted during SpaceX’s live coverage of the moment.

The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket booster just made it through a crucial moment in the mission: stage separation. That’s when Super Heavy shuts down most of its engines in a moment called “main engine cutoff,” or MECO, as the rocket booster has now burned through most of its fuel. Starship then ignited its own engines and thrust itself away from the Super Heavy booster in a maneuver SpaceX calls “hot staging.” Hot staging essentially uses the thrust of Starship’s engines to push it away from the Super Heavy, rather than using a more delicate mechanism such as pneumatic thrusters.

SpaceX’s Tyler Lionquist just gave a brief update on the company’s big money driver: Starlink, a network of internet-beaming satellites that whirl around in low-Earth orbit. Just a few years ago, SpaceX detractors were openly questioning whether the network — which works differently from more traditional space-based internet services that make use of satellites flying thousands of miles farther out in space — would even work. Now, it’s clear Starlink will be a huge source of income for SpaceX for years to come. The service has more than 7 million customers at this time, Lionquist noted. And the company has now launched more than 300 batches of the satellites on its Falcon rockets, which are far smaller than Starship but launch frequently from Florida and California. Each batch consists of a few dozen satellites. SpaceX has nearly 8,600 active Starlink satellites in orbit, according to data aggregated by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist with the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

SpaceX’s sprawling South Texas facilities — which were recently incorporated into their own town by the name of Starbase, Texas — change rapidly. Buildings stretching across thousands of square feet are built in mere months as outmoded infrastructure is rapidly replaced, epitomizing SpaceX’s ethos of moving fast and “iterating,” or quickly changing course when necessary. Such is also the case for the launchpad that this Starship rocket will take off from tonight. The structure, often referred to as Mechazilla by SpaceXers because of its resemblance to a gigantic metal giant, will be retired in favor of a new, more robust launchpad nearby. The tower is designed to fit the even larger version of Starship prototypes — called Version 3 — that SpaceX is expected to debut for the next test mission. SpaceX is also constructing a Starship launch tower in Florida, though it’s still awaiting regulatory approval to make use of it.

SpaceX has so far safely landed Super Heavy rocket boosters after three of its 10 test flights. And the company is already taking steps toward beginning to reuse the rocket parts it recovers. The ninth Starship test flight in May marked the first time the company reused a booster. And SpaceX will repeat the approach today, using the Super Heavy booster that flew during Flight 8 in March. On this flight, 24 of the 33 engines that sit at the base of Super Heavy will be embarking on their second journey. “Its primary test objective will be demonstrating a unique landing burn engine configuration planned to be used on the next generation Super Heavy,” SpaceX said of the booster in a statement. SpaceX eventually hopes to rapidly reuse the entire Super Heavy booster — taking it from landing to launch as smoothly as an airplane between legs of a flight.

SpaceX does not appear to be tracking any significant technical issues or other scenarios that could prohibit takeoff this evening. Launch controllers just gave the green light to begin loading up the 400-foot-tall rocket and spacecraft system with fuel. The vehicle can hold a combined total of 11 million pounds of propellant — which includes methane (the fuel) and oxygen (the oxidizer). Both the methane and oxygen are kept at super-cold temperatures so they are loaded in liquid — or cryogenic — form.

While NASA and its policymakers and stakeholders continue to ring alarm bells — emphasizing that Starship needs to be ready to land astronauts on the moon before China gets there — SpaceX has its sights set farther in the solar system. On company livestreams of Starship tests, the moon is rarely mentioned. (During the August test mission, the words “moon” and “lunar” were used once each while Mars was referenced 35 times.) That’s because, for SpaceX, Starship has always been a vehicle designed for exploring the red planet, not the moon. For more than a decade, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has made it clear that his driving mission is to land humans on Mars for the first time and eventually establish a permanent base there. NASA gave SpaceX’s Starship a $2.8 billion contract to help with its moon landing goals in 2021 — hoping to take advantage of the immense time and resources SpaceX was already pouring into the development of the gargantuan launch system.