Starship S24, S25, S28

Starship S24 [SpaceX]

Starship-S24 is the first orbital prototype for SpaceX' reusable Starship space transportation system.

For the maiden marginally orbital flight, Starship-S24 was fitted with the propulsion, attitude control systems and themal protection systems. The Starship Orbital test flight originated from Starbase, Boca Chica, TX. The Booster stage was to separate approximately 170 seconds into flight. The Booster was then to perform a partial return and land in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 32 km from the shore. The orbital Starship was to continue on flying between the Florida Straits. It would have achiedve a low transatmospheric orbit, which would have lead to reentry after less than one complete orbit. After reentry, it was to performing a powered, targeted landing approximately 100 km off the northwest coast of Kauai in a soft ocean landing. Recovery of both stages is not planned.

SpaceX intends to collect as much data as possible during flight to quantify entry dynamics and better understand what the vehicle experiences in a flight regime that is extremely difficult to accurately predict or replicate computationally. This data will anchor any changes in vehicle design or CONOPs after the first flight and build better models to use in internal simulations.

The flight suffered from several engines malfunctioning which lead to destruction before staging. On lift of, the vehicle's thrust severely damaged the launch site.

Starship-S25 was a similar prototype flown on the second flight with an improved stage 1. Although it reached space, it was destroyed by the self destruct system eight seconds before the planned shut off of the engines.

Starship-S28 reached successfuly its planed trajectory. It tested opening and closing the payload door and a conducted a fuel transfer experiment between two tanks. It also was to test the reignition of a Raptor engine before reentry, but this was not conducted. The vehicle appeared not to reach a stable attitude, which eventually led to a tumbling reentry over the Indian ocean. Also it lost a number of heat shield tiles. Contact was lost at an altitude of 65 km.