A SpaceX Starship rocket flies on its third test flight

SpaceX launched the third test flight of its Starship rocket on Thursday and reached space, as the company pushed development of the giant vehicle past new milestones.

Elon Musk's company launched the Starship at about 9:25 a.m. ET from its Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas.

The missile flew farther than previous tests, lasting about an hour before the Starship crashed over the Indian Ocean. The company indicated that the car did not fall into the water, which was the intended end of the trip.

“We've lost Ship 28,” Dan Hout, SpaceX's director of communications, said in the company's webcast.

The flight represents an important step toward SpaceX completing prototype testing and beginning operational spacecraft launches.

Musk congratulated his company in a post shortly after the launch, declaring that “the spacecraft has reached orbital speed!”

NASA Chief Bill Nelson also congratulated SpaceX on a “successful test flight!”

“The spacecraft has soared into the sky. Together, we are making great strides through Artemis to return humanity to the Moon, and then we look forward to Mars,” NASA administrator Nelson wrote in a social media post.

SpaceX flew the entire Starship rocket system in two tests last year, with launches in April and November. Both previous launches had gradual but explosive results: While each rocket flew for a few minutes, with the latest rocket reaching space, both vehicles were eventually destroyed by problems.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday cleared SpaceX to attempt a third launch.

The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to become a new way to transport goods and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also crucial to NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX has won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA's Artemis Moon program.

SpaceX strongly emphasizes a “building on what we have learned from previous flights” approach to its approach to spacecraft development. The company says its strategy is focused on “iterative improvement” of the rocket, with test flights with fiery results representing progress toward its goal of a fully reusable rocket that can take humans to the moon and Mars.

Musk said last year that he expects the company to spend about $2 billion on developing Starship in 2023.

Starship is the longest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on a Super Heavy booster, the Starship is 397 feet long and has a diameter of about 30 feet.

The super-heavy booster, measuring 232 feet tall, is what begins the rocket's journey into space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust — about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust from NASA's Space Launch System rocket, which first launched late last year.

The spacecraft itself, which stands 165 feet tall, has six Raptor engines — three for use while in Earth's atmosphere and three for operation in the vacuum of space.

The missile operates with liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The complete system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant to launch.

There were no people on board the spacecraft for flight testing. Company leadership has previously confirmed that SpaceX expects to launch hundreds of Starship missions before launching the rocket with any crew.

SpaceX has far surpassed its second launch flight, which took nearly eight minutes, and completed more milestones.

The company tested several new capabilities on this flight. SpaceX confirmed that this includes opening and closing the spacecraft's door once it reaches space — which will be how the rocket deploys payloads such as satellites on future missions — and transferring fuel during flight in a NASA demonstration. It did not perform a planned demonstration of restarting the spacecraft's engines while it was in space.