SpaceX launched its secretive Starfall delivery today, which saw a demo capsule blast off to low Earth orbit. There are few details about the launch or a future service, but SpaceX has previously said Starfall will enable cargo delivery from space, such as for manufactured materials in low Earth orbit like pharmaceutical compounds or semiconductor alloys.

The Starfall capsule took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at around 6.50am local time (1152 BST) this morning, riding on a Falcon 9 rocket, which later landed on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

What will Starfall do?

SpaceX hasn’t revealed much publicly about Starfall, but an assessment published by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) showed that the project’s purpose was for the “transport and delivery of goods through space”. SpaceX has said that the mission will allow for “routine access to the microgravity environment for scientific research and in-space manufacturing”. The FAA assessment also showed that two associated re-entry vehicle landings were approved for this demonstration mission.

Unlike SpaceX’s spacecraft that ferry human passengers to the International Space Station, the vehicle for Starfall is designed for cargo only. It is a windowless, black, stumpy cylinder, measuring around 3 metres across and less than a metre tall, and has capacity for a 1-tonne payload. The capsule is split into two parts that are designed to separate after re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere: an upper dish where the payload is stored, and a heat shield made from carbon fibre beneath it, which also has compressed gas that can be used to manoeuvre the cargo safely to Earth.

What happened during the launch?

After the Falcon 9 rocket took off, the booster successfully landed on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean. However, SpaceX has provided no further updates about the Starfall capsule in space, such as how long it will remain in orbit before it aims to splash down in the Pacific Ocean 1300 kilometres from the Californian coast.

Is SpaceX the only company doing this?

There are much smaller companies that are seeking to manufacture materials in low Earth orbit, such as the US firm Varda Space Industries (VSI), which aims to make pharmaceuticals in orbit before flying them back to Earth, or the Welsh company Space Forge, which hopes to make semiconductors and alloys in low Earth orbit. Both firms hope that producing materials in low-gravity environments will free them from the defects and structural deformities that can form as a result of Earth’s gravity, such as when heavier particles sink to the bottom of a liquid rather than distributing uniformly.

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These companies, however, operate at a much smaller scale than Starfall. VSI has flown six containers to orbit, but these are only around a metre wide and have a total weight of 300 kilograms, whereas Starfall is three times larger.

SpaceX has contracts with the US military, of which Starfall could play a part. The Pentagon has announced a project called Rocket Cargo, which would use SpaceX’s larger Starship rocket to deliver supplies to remote locations in under an hour, but Starfall could plug the gap for smaller deliveries. The US military has also signed contracts with other companies, such as Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and New Zealand-based Rocket Lab, to study the possibility of cargo delivery from space.

SpaceX will fly an extensively upgraded Starship next week that will – if it launches successfully – break records as the tallest and most powerful rocket in history. The flight will be watched keenly at NASA, as the craft is vital to its plans to put humans back on the moon in 2028.

Starship is made up of two parts: an upper stage, confusingly also called Starship, and a lower stage called Super Heavy. Since the last Starship test in October last year, SpaceX has been making extensive revisions to both stages.

The twelfth test flight, which is , will involve new version 3 models of both craft. Powering each stage will be version 3 Raptor engines, which have seen limited testing on previous flights, and the launch will take place from a newly designed pad at the company’s Starbase site in Texas, meaning that the stakes for the test are particularly high.

On Super Heavy 3, the number of grid fins, intended to steer it back through the atmosphere to a safe landing, has been reduced from four to three but their size is expanded by 50 per cent. Starship 3 has a new, larger propellant tank, equipment for in-orbit refuelling and improved heat-resistant tiles for atmospheric re-entry.

The total height of the rocket at launch will be 124 metres – about 1 metre taller than version 2 of Starship. Its height also surpasses the 98-metre-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket currently used by NASA and the 111-metre-tall Saturn V that sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 70s.

Starship 3 will also have 75,000 kilonewtons of thrust, which is almost twice the 39,000 kilonewtons of SLS, making it the most powerful rocket ever launched.

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at the University of Sheffield, UK, has calculated that the power of all the engines on the full Starship stack, at peak output, is larger than that produced by all electricity generation in Germany. “It’s massive,” says John.

Starship is being developed to put satellites in orbit and also ultimately to run missions to Mars, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. But it has also been selected by NASA as one of two commercial lander designs for its Artemis programme to return humans to the moon, alongside a lander from Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin.

After an uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022, the second Artemis flight earlier this year took four astronauts around the moon, further from Earth than any human has travelled before.

A recently released confirms that the Artemis III mission will see crew launch in an Orion spacecraft atop the SLS rocket into low Earth orbit and then rendezvous with “one or both commercial lunar landers provided by SpaceX and Blue Origin”. Such a manoeuvre will be needed to get crew and fuel aboard a lander ahead of a mission to land on the moon’s surface, with Artemis IV aiming to do this as early as 2028.

SpaceX is using a fail-fast, learn-fast strategy more common in Silicon Valley than the conservative world of space exploration. Out of the 11 previous test flights, there have been six successful flights and five failures. Neither SpaceX nor NASA responded to a request for comment.

at Kingston University London believes SpaceX is on track for the Artemis programme, despite previous failures. “Rocket science is difficult. It’s challenging. It’s complex,” says Shaw. “Can they do it? Yes. Can they do it within the timeline? There’s a lot to be quietly confident about. Even if you have another failure or two, or five… they’ll learn from it, they’ll iterate it and they’ll put a new system together.”

John says the upcoming Starship test will be important to verify the design of the version 3 craft that will form the basis of the the Human Lander System (HLS) that SpaceX intends to touch down on the moon. HLS will need significant alterations, such as different engines designed to touch down under the moon’s lower gravity, and no heat shield, as it will never have to withstand re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere.

“It’s in a way small, incremental improvements, but then also it’s by far the most significant version: this version 3 is what they need for the Artemis programme. The other ones have been prototypes,” says John. “Version 3 is really the first test of the production model. Now it’s just making it reliable.”

The world’s most powerful rocket, SpaceX’s Starship, has completed a successful suborbital test flight following a run of three disappointing launches that ended in fiery explosions.

SpaceX is several years into its development programme for Starship, intended to be a rapidly reusable and extremely powerful launch vehicle that will take over the rollout of the company’s Starlink satellites and be a central part of NASA’s Artemis moon missions. Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, has even said that Starship is key to his goal of colonising Mars.

The firm is using a fail-fast, learn-fast strategy more common in Silicon Valley than the conservative world of space exploration. But despite an expectation of repeated failure, a recent run of bad luck still concerned many observers.

Test flights 7, 8 and 9 all ended in disaster for Starship’s upper stage, which either exploded or broke up on reentry and didn’t reach Earth for a safe landing. Preparations for test flight 10 also encountered problems when an upper stage exploded while it was being loaded with propellant for a ground test.

The run of failures had led to some criticism and suggestions that SpaceX would be unable to get its rapid reuse concept up and running. But the 10th test flight on 26 August from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas was largely a success, albeit one that came after two consecutive launch date cancellations.

The upper stage reached space, deployed eight mock-up Starlink satellites and tested its ability to relight its engines in a vacuum. An unexpected explosion did cause damage near the engines, but nonetheless the ship completed its mission, reentered Earth’s atmosphere and slowed itself for a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean at a precise location, where a camera-equipped buoy gave SpaceX engineers crucial views of the craft’s behaviour.

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The booster stage separated from Starship and also carried out a controlled splashdown, this time in the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment, but said on its website that every “major objective was met” during the mission.

at the University of Glasgow, UK, says the launch was “an incredible achievement which brings us closer to low-cost, high-cadence, bulk transport to space”.

Despite the improvement in fortunes, doubts remain that Starship can be ready in time for , currently scheduled for 2027. SpaceX also still aims to send a Starship – albeit uncrewed – .