It was a one step forward, one step back kind of day for SpaceX. Mechazilla’s tower once again captured the incoming Starship booster in dramatic fashion, but the top stage was lost due to a climbing anomaly.

The Starship lifted off from the Boca Chica launch mount at 5:37 pm ET, rising into the clear blue skies of Texas. The 403-foot-tall (123-meter) rocket began warm staging and booster engine cutoff before the three-minute mark. The booster then begins its descent back to Earth, while the upper stage continues its journey through space.

Flight controllers quickly gave the go-ahead for a booster catch, with the Super Heavy returning to the launch mount roughly seven minutes into the mission. The “Mechazilla” launching tower, with its chopstick-like arms, successfully caught the incoming booster. This marks the second time that SpaceX has acquired the booster (it was created for first time on October 13, 2024 during Starship’s fifth test flight), further validating the catch tower concept and providing a major vote of confidence that Starship will eventually become a fully reusable launch system.

Mechazilla gets the Super Heavy booster! pic.twitter.com/aq91TloYzY

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 16, 2025

While the booster succeeded in its mission, the same cannot be said for the long stage. An unspecified anomaly resulted in the loss of the vehicle during ascent, preventing SpaceX from achieving several key goals for the mission, including the deployment of mock Starlink satellites. The Starship failed before the 12-minute mark, with its final telemetry indicating a speed of 13,246 miles per hour (21,317 kilometers per hour) and an altitude of 91 miles (146 kilometers).

The upper stage used for this mission—the seventh Starship flight test—featured an upgraded design. It was the first long-term failure since the program’s early days of fully integrated Starship tests. The long stage, with its design changes, means that SpaceX is basically dealing with a new type of vehicle, with systems that interact with each other for the first time. According to the SpaceX broadcast, “a couple of engines went down” before the vehicle lost communications, apparently exploding.

SpaceX will likely reveal a reason for the failure in the coming days or weeks, but needless to say, the company will learn from this failure. This is what SpaceX does—treating failures as incremental stepping stones toward future success.

“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent. Teams will continue to review data from the current flight test to better understand the underlying cause,” the company explained. in a tweet. “With testing like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability.”

Unconfirmed photos show the long stage falling back to Earth in pieces, leaving bright, colorful streaks in its wake.

RUD of the century tbh. pic.twitter.com/XCbFxtO2wE

— A. Pettit (@PettitFrontier) January 16, 2025

SpaceX continues to make progress in making Starship a fully operational launch system, getting closer with each test flight. Once operational, the rocket is expected to revolutionize access to space, launching multiple sets of Starlink satellites with payloads for paying customers. Its enormous payload fairing and lifting power even enables the design and deployment of spacecraft that previously could not be launched due to size and weight constraints; powered by 33 Raptor engines, the Starship should be able to deliver 150 metric tons to low Earth orbit.

NASA, which invested in Starship as part of its Artemis program, plans to use the rocket’s long stage as a human landing system for future missions to the Moon. And, of course, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has even bigger ambitions—he sees Starship as the key to colonizing Mars and transforming humanity into a multi-planetary species.