CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX successfully launched its highly anticipated Starfall Demo mission on Tuesday morning, lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The Falcon 9 rocket roared to life at 6:53 a.m. EDT (1053 UTC), carving through pristine skies after meteorologists with the 45th Weather Squadron predicted a 95 percent chance of favorable launch weather.
Veteran Booster Achieves Milestone Landing
The mission was powered into the sky by a heavily flown Falcon 9 first-stage booster, designation B1078, marking its historic 29th flight. The prolific booster previously supported high-profile missions including NASA’s Crew-6, USSF-124, and SES’ O3b mPOWER-B, alongside multiple national security and Starlink flights.
Nearly nine minutes after liftoff, following successful stage separation, B1078 executed a flawless return to Earth. It touched down safely on SpaceX’s drone ship, A Shortfall of Gravitas, stationed out in the Atlantic Ocean. The successful recovery marked the 157th landing for this specific vessel and the 628th booster landing for SpaceX to date.
Keeping with the secretive nature of the demo mission, SpaceX concluded its public coverage shortly after booster touchdown, with no live views from the 2nd stage.
Unlocking In-Space Manufacturing and Rapid Delivery
Unlike typical SpaceX missions designed to deploy massive communication networks or carry astronauts, the Starfall mission serves as a critical test for an entirely new spacecraft architecture meant to bring cargo back to Earth.
According to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Environmental Assessment (EA) published in May, the Starfall spacecraft is a compact, disk-shaped, uncrewed reentry capsule.
Each capsule is a cylindrical structure measuring approximately 2.5 feet (0.75 meters) tall and 10.2 feet (3.1 meters) in diameter. Weighing roughly 4,600 pounds (2,100 kg) empty, the capsule is designed to carry up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) of payload from low-Earth orbit, for a total orbital weight of 6,800 pounds (3,100 kg).
While SpaceX has not disclosed exactly how many spacecraft are on board this specific launch, a graphic from a recent initial public offering roadshow presentation pointed to a satellite bus equipped with slots to host up to four Starfall capsules under the banner of “In-orbit manufacturing.”
The FAA document highlights two primary long-term objectives for the Starfall program:
1.) Enable point-to-point delivery of critical cargo through space on rapid timelines.
2.) Create a self-sustaining commercial in-space manufacturing market by offering access to microgravity and vacuum, loiter on orbit, and safe return from orbit as a service at scale.
Government documents suggest the platform is being built to serve as a proliferated successor to the International Space Station (ISS), taking the lab’s successful microgravity manufacturing experiments and scaling them into a self-sustaining economy.
A Novel, No-Burn Reentry Design
The technology underlying Starfall introduces a unique operational profile. The capsules do not contain a main propulsion system. Instead, they rely entirely on an attitude control system powered by inert gas to properly orient themselves in space. Because they can only adjust their attitude and cannot perform a traditional de-orbit burn, the capsules rely heavily on precise deployment mechanics.
The spacecraft itself consists of two primary components that separate after enduring atmospheric reentry:
- The Top Plate: An aluminum structure partially wrapped in thermal protection material, weighing roughly 1,400 kg.
- The Heat Shield: A 700 kg carbon fiber structure wrapped in thermal protective materials. It houses two large, 151-liter compressed nitrogen gas-filled composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) alongside several smaller 9-liter auxiliary gas bottles.
Following its descent through the atmosphere, the top plate is designed to separate from the vehicle to deploy a sequence of three parachutes: a drogue, a pilot, and main landing parachutes. The parachute system is connected to four reinforced attachment points on the vehicle.
Ultimately, SpaceX intends to recover the Starfall capsules out of the Pacific Ocean, utilizing recovery methods similar to its flight-proven Dragon spacecraft.
It remains unclear how long these initial demonstration capsules will loiter in orbit before attempting their ocean splashdowns.