STARBASE, Texas—SpaceX launched the 10th test flight of the company's Starship rocket Tuesday evening, sending the stainless steel spacecraft halfway around the world to an on-target splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

The largely successful mission for the world's largest rocket was an important milestone for SpaceX's Starship program after months of repeated setbacks, including three disappointing test flights and a powerful explosion on the ground that destroyed the ship that engineers were originally readying for this launch.

For the first time, SpaceX engineers received data on the performance of the ship's upgraded heat shield and control flaps during reentry back into the atmosphere. The three failed Starship test flights to start the year ended before the ship reached reentry. Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, has described developing a durable, reliable heat shield as the most pressing challenge for making Starship a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.

And there were lessons to learn from Tuesday's test flight. The ship made it all the way to the Indian Ocean intact, arriving next to a prepositioned buoy northwest of Australia, where it was just after sunrise Wednesday morning at the time of splashdown. A camera on the buoy showed the ship slowing down before contacting the water, then tipping over and exploding as expected.

But a large section of the ship had transitioned from its original silver color to a rusty hue of orange and brown. Officials didn't immediately address this or say whether it was anticipated, but it could suggest heating damage to the rocket's stainless steel skin during reentry. If so, that might require more changes to the design of the ship's heat shield, but this is the kind of information engineers were looking for with this test flight.

Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting tenth flight test of Starship! pic.twitter.com/5sbSPBRJBP

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 27, 2025

The auspicious results showed that SpaceX has solved the problems that hamstrung the Starship program earlier this year. Most of the issues that led to the ship's recent failures were in the rocket's propulsion and propellant systems. Those all appeared to function well on Tuesday.

It also lays the foundation for SpaceX to test new Starship capabilities, such as recovering the ship back at the launch site and in-orbit refueling. These are critical prerequisites for Starship to achieve its full promise: flying cargo and eventually people to more distant destinations like the Moon and Mars.

"Congratulations to SpaceX on its Starship test," wrote Sean Duffy, NASA's acting administrator, on X. "Flight 10's success paves the way for the Starship Human Landing System that will bring American astronauts back to the Moon on Artemis III. This is a great day for NASA and our commercial space partners."

NASA has two contracts with SpaceX worth more than $4 billion to develop a version of Starship to land astronauts on the lunar surface. Meanwhile, SpaceX's founder and CEO, Elon Musk, is focused on sending Starships to Mars.

Here’s what happened

Tuesday's mission began a little more than an hour earlier with the liftoff of SpaceX's 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage from the company's launch site in Starbase, Texas, just north of the US-Mexico border, at 6:30 pm CDT (7:30 pm EDT; 23:30 UTC). SpaceX called off two launch attempts on Sunday and Monday due to a technical problem and bad weather.

But Tuesday's countdown was smooth, and the rocket lit 33 Raptor engines on its Super Heavy booster stage at the opening of the launch window. Moments later, the rocket lumbered skyward, riding nearly 17 million pounds of thrust and trailing a distinctive blue-orange flame from its methane-fueled engines.

Heading east over the Gulf of Mexico, Starship and its Super Heavy booster accelerated through the speed of sound and rocketed into the stratosphere in the first couple of minutes of the flight. Then, right on time, the booster shut off its engines and released from the Starship upper stage about two-and-a-half minutes into the launch.

Starship ignited six of its own Raptor engines to continue powering itself into space, while the Super Heavy booster flipped around to fly tail-first and relit some of its engines in the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere to reverse course and boost itself back toward the Texas coastline.

On this mission, SpaceX intentionally guided the Super Heavy booster toward a location in the Gulf of Mexico just offshore from Starbase, forgoing another attempt to catch the rocket back at the launch pad. SpaceX has recovered three Super Heavy boosters in this manner before.

Instead, on Tuesday's flight, engineers wanted to test the rocket's ability to overcome an engine failure during its landing burn. One of the booster's three center engines was intentionally disabled during descent, and the rocket used a combination of two center engines and one engine from the middle ring of Raptor powerplants to slow down for splashdown.

The booster appeared to handle the stress test well, settling into the Gulf and tipping over as planned. The descent was visible to spectators onshore and was accompanied by a double sonic boom.

Meanwhile, the ship's upper stage fired its engines until the nine-minute mark in the flight, reaching a top speed during launch of 16,463 mph (26,495 kilometers per hour), just shy of the velocity needed for a stable orbit around the Earth. This put the rocket on a trajectory to soar to a peak altitude of 119 miles (192 kilometers), passing over the Atlantic Ocean, South Africa, and then the Indian Ocean before falling back into the atmosphere.

The flight's next milestone was a first for Starship. About 15 minutes into the mission, the ship opened its payload bay door and began releasing eight flat-packed steel panels installed on the rocket to simulate the deployment of SpaceX's next-generation Starship Internet satellites.

This was the first time SpaceX used the ship's payload deployment mechanism, which engineers liken to a Pez dispenser, using pulleys to move the rack of Starlink simulators and push them out of the rocket's side door one at a time. Future Starship flights will launch as many as 60 next-generation Starlinks per launch, greatly increasing the network's capacity, according to Dan Huot, a SpaceX official who anchored the company's live webcast of Tuesday's flight.

The ship then closed its payload bay door and prepared to restart one of its six engines for a brief maneuver to test its ability to change its trajectory. The three-second burn was successful, demonstrating that the ship could guide itself toward reentry on future flights into low-Earth orbit.

Finally, flying belly-forward with its nose pointed skyward, Starship plunged back into the atmosphere. A spectacular sheath of purple-orange plasma surrounded the ship as temperatures climbed to near 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius). Live video from multiple cameras outside the ship showed it moving its flaps to steer through reentry, using aerodynamic forces from the thickening air to aim for the splashdown zone, where a buoy was waiting to see it drop into the sea.

The reentry profile was designed to intentionally stress the structural limits of the ship's rear flaps. Engineers planned to use the test as a learning exercise before SpaceX eventually returns a future ship from orbit back to the launch pad, where giant mechanical arms will catch it in a similar way to how SpaceX has shown it can catch Super Heavy boosters.

The ship made it all the way through reentry, turned to a horizontal position to descend through scattered clouds, then relit three of its engines to flip back to a vertical orientation for the final braking maneuver before splashdown.

Things to improve on

There are several takeaways from Tuesday's flight that will require some improvements to Starship, but these are more akin to what officials might expect from a rocket test program and not the catastrophic failures of the ship that occurred earlier this year.

One of the Super Heavy booster's 33 engines prematurely shut down during ascent. This has happened before, and while it didn't affect the booster's overall performance, engineers will investigate the failure to try to improve the reliability of SpaceX's Raptor engines, each of which can generate more than a half-million pounds of thrust.

Later in the flight, cameras pointed at one of the ship's rear flaps showed structural damage to the back of the wing. It wasn't clear what caused the damage, but super-heated plasma burned through part of the flap as the ship fell deeper into the atmosphere. Still, the flap remained largely intact and was able to help control the vehicle through reentry and splashdown.

"We’re kind of being mean to this Starship a little bit," Huot said on SpaceX's live webcast. "We're really trying to put it through the paces and kind of poke on what some of its weak points are."

Small chunks of debris were also visible peeling off the ship during reentry. The origin of the glowing debris wasn't immediately clear, but it may have been parts of the ship's heat shield tiles. On this flight, SpaceX tested several different tile designs, including ceramic and metallic materials, and one tile design that uses "active cooling" to help dissipate heat during reentry.

A bright flash inside the ship's engine bay during reentry also appeared to damage the vehicle's aft skirt, the stainless steel structure that encircles the rocket's six main engines.

"That's not what we want to see," Huot said. "We just saw some of the aft skirt just take a hit. So we've got some visible damage on the aft skirt. We’re continuing to reenter, though. We are intentionally stressing the ship as we go through this, so it is not guaranteed to be a smooth ride down to the Indian Ocean.

"We’ve removed a bunch of tiles in kind of critical places across the vehicle, so seeing stuff like that is still valuable to us," he said. "We are trying to kind of push this vehicle to the limits to learn what its limits are as we design our next version of Starship."

Shana Diez, a Starship engineer at SpaceX, perhaps summed up Tuesday's results best on X: "It's not been an easy year but we finally got the reentry data that's so critical to Starship. It feels good to be back!"

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Army National Guard veteran Christopher Purdy says President Trump's executive order to create a specialized D.C. National Guard unit is a workaround to use the military as a domestic police force.

(Image credit: Alex Wong)

A few hours ago, RFK Jr. ousted the CDC Director for refusing to rubber-stamp unscientific and reckless directives. In its wake, three senior CDC officials also resigned. The United States lost remarkable leaders today—people who devoted decades, across many administrations, to protecting the health of families and communities. They weren’t just experts; they were steady hands and trusted voices, showing up in moments of crisis with clarity, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to the public good.

When leaders like this are pushed out, it’s not just the agency that suffers; it’s all of us. A weaker CDC means more vulnerable communities. Public health only works when the people leading it are strong, principled, and supported in their duty to protect and serve individuals and communities. Right now, that foundation is eroding at a speed I never thought possible. The nation’s health security is at risk.

Thank you for your service, Demetre, Dan, Deb, and Susan. I’m beyond heartbroken by what is happening at CDC and the public health field as a whole.

Simply put: This is not okay.

Now, for Covid-19 vaccine news…

At CVS the other day, a pregnant woman—glowing, excited for her first baby—stepped up to the counter and asked for the Covid-19 vaccine. She knew the shot could pass antibodies to her newborn, protecting during those fragile first months of life. The most basic human instinct: a mother protecting her child.

But the pharmacist shook his head. “We have no idea what’s happening. The guidelines keep changing. We can’t give you a vaccine.”

Tears welled up as she asked for the older Covid-19 vaccine formula. Again, no. She walked out without the protection she came for.

I wish I could have answered all of her questions (and the pharmacists!) right there in that moment. Instead, I’m hoping to equip you with the clarity she—and so many others—deserve. This scene is likely repeating across the country.

Here are the top 12 questions we got from you, answered with what I know today.

1. Who is eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine this fall?

This is a simple question with a complicated answer, as it depends on whom you want to turn to for guidance.

The federal government (FDA) changed the license (i.e., “label”) for the Covid-19 vaccine today. FDA’s job is to determine whether a vaccine is safe, effective, and properly manufactured. So each year, before fall vaccines go in arms, the FDA updates the fall vaccine labels after inspecting production and before they reach shelves.

Today, the FDA announced that the Covid-19 vaccine is ready for use, but it has limited the vaccine label to individuals over 65 and those between 6 months and 64 years old with at least one condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from Covid-19. This is different from previous years, when it was labeled for everyone over 6 months. It is highly unusual for the FDA to restrict its approval for a drug in this way.

Regardless, last week, professional organizations started releasing their own recommendations (which they’ve done for more than 90 years), and some do not align with FDA’s new label:

• Kids: The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that all children under 2 years old get vaccinated, as well as high-risk children or those living with someone who is high-risk. Notably, the guidance includes permissive language that children not in the risk groups “whose parent or guardian desires their protection from Covid-19” should be offered a vaccine.

• Pregnant women: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) published guidance last week recommending that pregnant women receive the vaccine at any point during pregnancy, when planning to become pregnant, in the postpartum period, or while lactating.

• Adults: American College of Physicians (ACP) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) have yet to give input regarding their recommendations for adults and immunocompromised patients. However, IDSA did put out a strong reactive statement today: “narrow[ing] the Covid-19 vaccine label ignores science and puts millions of lives at risk”

To make things even more confusing, the federal government will weigh in again this September through ACIP—an external advisory committee to the CDC that sets vaccine policy—on who they believe should receive the Covid-19 vaccine. Typically, this guidance is issued in June (before the license change), so this delay is unusual and leaves insurance companies uncertain about who should be covered.

Bottom line: If someone is not within the FDA label (for example, a healthy 1-year-old) but still wants the Covid-19 vaccine this fall (for example, because AAP recommends it), they will need to get the Covid-19 vaccine “off-label.”

2. What qualifies as high risk?

“High risk” appears undefined by the FDA. This is normal and indicates that it defaults to this CDC review, which remains unchanged from earlier this year. CDC’s “high risk” list covers a significant portion of the U.S. adult population, including pregnant people and people with diabetes, a disability, overweight/obesity, cancer, or a mental health condition.

This list could (and likely will) be changed in September during the ACIP meeting by the committee that RFK Jr. replaced. We will update you if that happens.

3. Will we need documentation to prove we’re “at risk?”

Pharmacies will likely go with something called “self-attestation.” In other words, you need to check a box that says you have a high-risk condition. It’s unlikely that insurance will check this against your medical records, but it’s possible.

4. If I’m not high risk, can I get the vaccine off-label? Could I pay out of pocket if I want it?

It will likely be hard to get it “off-label,” but not impossible. There are three reasons for this:

1. Pharmacists can’t give vaccines off-label in most states. This is a problem because more than 90% of Covid-19 vaccines were given in pharmacies last year.

2. Physicians will need to administer the vaccine, though many may be uncomfortable doing so (although it is legal; see next question).

3. It’s unclear whether insurance will cover off-label vaccines. If they do not, you can pay out of pocket.

5. What about physician liability?

Despite what RFK Jr. has implied in the most heinous way, doctors are not suddenly at risk for doing their jobs if they follow AAP or ACOG guidance. Prescribing off-label happens every day in medicine. One in five medications is prescribed off-label. The FDA label change may impact the additional liability immunity provided by the PREP Act for use of Covid-19 vaccines. Regardless, providers are covered by the same professional liability and malpractice standards that apply to their other medical decisions. Physicians remain free to recommend what they believe is best for their patients.

6. When should I get the Covid-19 vaccine?

Technically, you can get it right now. However, please note that it may take a few days to a week for your pharmacy to receive the new vaccine shipment.

If you have recently had a Covid-19 infection, it’s best to wait at least 6 months.

If you’re at high risk and more than 6 months have passed since your last vaccine, I recommend getting the vaccine now. This will help protect you against severe disease, and we are in the middle of a Covid-19 wave.

7. What is happening with the pediatric vaccine?

Pfizer will not have a vaccine for children under 5. But Moderna will. As a result, the supply may be more limited, but technically, a vaccine is still available for this age group. Specifically:

• Pfizer’s COMIRNATY COVID-19 vaccine for those 5 years and older

• Moderna’s SPIKEVAX for those 6 months and older

• Novavax’s NUVAXOVID for those 12 years and older

8. Is the vaccine formula being updated this year?

Yes, to better match the variants currently circulating.

9. Is it okay not to get the Covid-19 vaccine anymore? Does having had a vax + some boosters provide any long-term protection? For how long?

The science hasn’t changed: The vaccine is still safe and effective. What has changed is the environment: most of us now have some level of immunity, which is why Covid-19 is no longer an emergency.

Immunity has two layers: short-term antibodies and long-term memory cells (T cells). Covid-19 antibodies fade within about 4 months, so without a recent vaccine (or infection), you’re more likely to get infected and more likely to spread it to others. Memory cells last longer and help prevent severe illness—this doesn’t seem to fade for healthy or young individuals, but not everyone’s immune system holds onto that protection equally well. That’s why high-risk groups are prioritized for ongoing vaccinations, like pregnant women, children under 2, adults over 65, and those with chronic conditions.

10. Does this situation apply to all brands of vaccines?

Yes. mRNA vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna) and the protein vaccine (Novavax) are all part of the same regulatory and policy tangle.

11. What will you be doing?

For my family, I will look to medical societies whose recommendations are evidence-based, trustworthy, and consistent.

12. What should I do right now?

Consider getting vaccinated for Covid-19 this fall. People who meet the new label indications should seek vaccines in ways similar to past years—through a pharmacist, physician, nurse, or other health care provider.

For those who aren’t within the label:

• Parents: Ask your child’s pediatric practice about their plans to follow AAP recommendations, particularly given the irregular process for ACIP for 2025-26.

• Adults: Call your physician’s office and pharmacy and ask who will be able to get the Covid-19 vaccine at their practices.

• Everyone: Call your insurance company to inquire what they will be covering for the fall, and for whom.

If you have trouble finding a vaccine and want to share your story, fill out this YLE form. We can’t help you find a store, but we would like to hear your story and share it with others, if you’re comfortable with it.

Bottom line

Today, the FDA changed the Covid-19 label, but the good news is that the high-risk list is still broad for now, and an off-label vaccination is possible. Many professional organizations are stepping in to recommend what the scientific evidence supports.

Love, YLE

*The original copy said 16, which was a mistake. The correct age is 6 months.

Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. YLE is a public health newsletter that reaches over 380,000 people in more than 132 countries, with one goal: to translate the ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below:

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