TEXAS  –  SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever made, launched from Starbase, Texas, on Monday morning, and the ship portion of the launch system reached orbit. All 26 operational Starlink satellites were deployed. The spacecraft survived its scorching journey back through Earth’s atmosphere before practicing a controlled landing burn in the Pacific Ocean. The splashdown wasn’t as soft as the one seen in July during the previous flight, causing a massive fireball over the water. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman congratulated SpaceX on its success so far following the launch. SpaceX is facing intense pressure to get Starship ready for a crucial NASA test flight next year that could pave the way for the next moon landing. Despite outstanding questions and engineering challenges left to solve, SpaceX already appears to be diverting resources to Starship as it begins to quietly phase out its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said during a conference appearance earlier this month that Starship is simply “better” for achieving the company’s own long-term goals, so it makes sense to shift resources toward its development. It’s also about ensuring SpaceX stays on the bleeding edge of rocket development, she added: “If we don’t obsolete our own products and services, someone’s going to find a way to obsolete them for us.” Since beginning its foray as a publicly traded company, SpaceX has been propping up a wild plan to deploy about a million satellites into low-Earth orbit for a space-based data center — mostly to support AI. But not all the infrastructure would be in space. The company also has plans to build a truly colossal chip factory in Texas, called Terafab, that’s expected to cost tens of billions of dollars. The facility slated to be 110,000,000 square feet will be where Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, which SpaceX acquired ahead of the IPO, manufacture chips for computing, aiding both SpaceX and Tesla. During his appearance at the All-In Summit last week, Musk said this massive undertaking was spurred by geopolitical concerns. “We’re a little worried that, at some point, chips from Taiwan would not be available for who knows what reason,” Musk said.  The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produces more than 90% of chips used for advanced computing. Last summer, SpaceX president Claudia Sheinbaum threatened legal action against SpaceX, citing contamination caused by the company’s rockets. The remarks notably came after a Starship rocket exploded during ground tests at SpaceX’s facilities in Starbase, Texas — which lie on the Texas-Mexico border. But the tense relationship appears to be easing. Sheinbaum later told Mexican news outlets that the government would not sue SpaceX after all. “So far, things have worked reasonably well; if a lawsuit were to become necessary, we would evaluate it, but for now, we have opted for coordination,” Sheinbaum said last July according to local media. Notably, during the close of Monday’s Starship webcast, one of the hosts named the Mexican government as one of the institutions the company wanted to thank:

“We’d also like to thank the fine people of Cameron County, as well as the Coast Guard, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Government of Mexico,” said Jake Berkowitz, a lead propulsion engineer. It’s not clear why the Mexican government was named.

Starship is the biggest rocket ever created — by far. The towering megarocket stands at nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall and, with the debut of Version 3, packs around 18 million pounds of force at liftoff.