Trump witnesses 6th SpaceX launch of Starship: What happened on previous flight tests?

SpaceX's massive Starship vehicle that will one day propel humans deep into the cosmos launched Tuesday evening for its latest flight test as President-elect Donald Trump looked on.

Trump has frequently raved at his rallies about the 400-foot behemoth, composed of both a spacecraft and a rocket, as well as SpaceX's successful catch of the returning booster stage during its October demonstration. But the complex maneuver was one Elon Musk's company was unable to repeat in its sixth and most recent uncrewed test, which Trump witnessed in person from Texas.

That hardly made the test a failure. The vehicle's upper stage continued its streak of successfully splashing down in the Indian Ocean after all SpaceX's 33 Raptor engines powered Starship off the pad from Starbase near the city of Brownsville.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson hailed the launch as a success in a post on Musk's social media platform X, calling it "major progress toward orbital flight."

The Starship is integral in NASA's plans of sending people back to the moon and Musk's grand vision of eventually colonizing Mars. As part of NASA's ambitious Artemis campaign, the space agency's first lunar program since the Apollo era of the 1970s, NASA is paying SpaceX $4 billion to develop a spacecraft capable of safely transporting astronauts from orbit to the moon's surface.

Musk has previously stated his vision of sending the first Starships to Mars in late 2026, the next time that Earth and Mars line up, followed by crewed flights in 2028.

As SpaceX prepares for more test flights in 2025, here's what to know about what happened in all the previous launches that began more than a year ago.

Starship test flight: SpaceX Starship splashes down after 6th launch; booster catch called off

Nov. 19, 2024: Trump in attendance; booster catch called off

The most recent Starship flight test took place in front of Trump, who has made a series of public appearances with Musk as the incoming president signals that the tech billionaire will have a large role in his administration.

The Starship began its projected trajectory over the Gulf of Mexico at 5 p.m. ET, following a similar suborbital path as previous flights. The vehicle's 232-foot "Super Heavy" rocket booster splashed down off the coast of Texas seven minutes after launch.

The spacecraft also includes the 165-foot Starship spacecraft itself, which flew for more than an hour before splashing down at 6:05 p.m. ET in the Indian Ocean.

As for the booster, SpaceX officials had hoped to replicate what they did for the first time in the previous test, steering it back autonomously to the landing pad before catching it with two giant mechanical arms. But during the flight, officials opted to skip the complex maneuver for safety reasons.

In an update on its website, SpaceX attributed the decision to data from "automated health checks" of hardware on both the launch and catch tower. SpaceX has not yet provided a more specific reason for why the booster catch was called off.

The company also reignited its Raptor engines in space to attempt an orbital burn – a crucial maneuver to one day bring a vehicle back to the ground. Tuesday's launch also included plans to fly the ship at a "higher angle of attack" to test what it can handle on future landings.

Oct. 13, 2024: SpaceX catches rocket booster in mechanical arm

For its fifth test flight, the empty Starship blasted off Oct. 13 from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. As in previous tests, the vehicle flew on a trajectory over the Gulf of Mexico into orbit.

In a first, the first-stage Super Heavy booster flew back to the launch pad. SpaceX had built a launch tower with massive mechanized metal arms, nicknamed "chopsticks," that then managed to catch the descending booster in a daring maneuver.

Having the capability of catching the Starship booster is crucial for SpaceX, giving the company a completely reusable vehicle that is able to fly again.

Prior to the booster dropping and landing, it had pushed the Starship upward into the atmosphere, sending it soaring more than 130 miles high.

An hour after liftoff, Starship made a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean. Ahead of the demo, SpaceX engineers reworked the rocket's heat shield, replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer tiles and a backup ablative layer.

June 6, 2024: Starship completes first-ever successful landing burn

The craft experienced a successful separation from the booster, which saw 32 of 33 engines igniting properly during launch, about seven minutes into the flight.

The booster successfully came back down to Earth and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico as planned and all six of Starship's engines powered it into successful orbital insertion.

Heat shields protecting the outside of the craft took a beating, with at least one throwing debris into one of the live-streaming external cameras, but it managed to make a successful reentry into Earth's atmosphere.

Roughly one hour and six minutes into the flight, Starship completed its first-ever landing burn and splashed down into the Indian Ocean to raucous applause.

March 14, 2024: Starship reaches space before being lost in atmosphere

In the third test, the Starship succeeded in separating from the booster and proceeding to orbit within minutes of launching, where it conducted a series of in-flight tests while coasting through space.

Video of its flight beamed back to Earth using SpaceX's Starlink Satellite network was able to capture the beginning of the spacecraft's re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. However, the signal was lost about an hour into the mission before SpaceX concluded that the craft likely broke apart.

Despite Starship's failure to make its planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean, SpaceX said the rocket still achieved several key milestones, including the successful firing of its 33 Raptor engines in the booster and the opening of a payload door.

Nov. 18, 2023: Starship makes it further in second test, but still explodes

During the second launch test of the Starship, the rocket survived for longer and achieved some milestones, but it still eventually exploded.

The booster was able to successfully separate from the rocket, which reached space before the ground crew lost communication with it after nine minutes. Three minutes later, SpaceX lost both the booster and the spacecraft in two explosions.

Rather than seeing it as a setback, SpaceX expressed optimism about the stage separation while saying the rest would just be valuable data to help them remedy whatever went wrong.

April 20, 2023: Starship explodes minutes after inaugural launch

The Starship got off to a rough start when it exploded just four minutes into its inaugural test flight on April 20.

The craft was able to launch at SpaceX’s private Starbase site, but telemetry data revealed that several of the spacecraft's engines had failed, triggering the explosion before the booster and spacecraft could even separate.

SpaceX later confirmed the rocket's flight termination system was activated to destroy the tumbling vehicle before it met its fiery end.

Contributing: Anthony Robledo

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

(This story was updated to correct errors.)

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: SpaceX Starship launches from Starbase: A look back at prior tests