SpaceX launches Starship in key test flight of massive rocket

In a key test flight on Friday, SpaceX tried but failed to recover both stages of its massive Starship rocket.

The rocket lifted off from the company's South Texas launch facility at 4:47 p.m. local time, or 5:47 p.m. ET. SpaceX had to abort its plans to catch and reuse the booster, instead diverting it to splash into the Gulf of Mexico, where it burst into flames.

Test Flight 15, the most ambitious Starship mission to date, was the first time Elon Musk's company attempted to catch both the booster and upper stage, or spacecraft portion, of the massive rocket.

Earlier on Friday, SpaceX obtained authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration. Hours later, the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop after reporting communication problems affecting "multiple" air traffic control centers. The SpaceX license wasn't effected by the flight stoppage, a spokesperson for the FAA told CNBC.

The upper stage of the Starship continued its trajectory into orbit after the company failed to catch and salvage the booster. The rocket is expected to fly around the Earth fourteen times in total. If successful, SpaceX will land the upper stage back at its Starbase facility on Saturday.

Starship's success is critical to SpaceX and its ambitions to eventually lift cargo and people to the surface of the Moon and Mars. In the near-term, SpaceX needs to send more satellites into orbit to expands its Starlink satellite internet service, which is currently the company's profit center.

The company's constellation already includes over 11,000 active satellites in low Earth orbit. One Starship rocket has the capacity to carry up to 60 Starlink v3 satellites into orbit, the company has said, representing about 20 times the capacity of earlier Falcon 9 rockets.

In the previous Starship test flight, the company released 26 v3 satellites, and released another 26 in the Friday test flight, with the goal of "Starlink becoming 51% of the internet," SpaceX said in a post on X.

When it comes to launches, "SpaceX is likely a full decade ahead of peers on this front," William Blair analysts wrote in a note out on Friday. "Even if tonight's catch is unsuccessful, a delay by a few months is not that consequential."

Meanwhile, SpaceX is facing fresh criticism over restrictions imposed on its Starshield satellite internet service in Ukraine. Starshield is built on Starlink technology and is the military-tier of SpaceX's satellite internet service.

Earlier this week, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country's military forces had experienced limits on Starshield without warning again, harming their ability to defend against Russia's ongoing aerial attacks. Similar limits on Starshield in Ukraine were temporarily imposed last month.

Some U.S. senators have condemned the restrictions, and urged Congress to investigate SpaceX.