Starship is presumed lost - Operation Success Patient Died.

January 16, 2025

SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot confirmed that it is safe to assume that Starship — which was packed with upgrades it was testing for the first time on this flight — did not survive.

“At this point, we are assuming that the ship has been lost,” he said. “But there’s a lot of things you’re going to learn as all those systems are now interacting with each other for the first time.”

While Super Heavy is already safely back home in the arms of its launch tower, the Starship spacecraft — which is meant to lap Earth and splash down in the Indian Ocean — has stopped delivering telemetry.

“We were expecting ship engine cut off about 40 seconds ago,” said SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot on the live stream. “We saw some of those engines start to go out prior to that point. And so right now we are just standing by to try and get the latest word on where we are.”

Graphics on the SpaceX webcast show only one of the Starship’s six engines were lit up at the time that the vehicle stopped sharing data.