Starship hits new milestones debridge swap It’s the first time Starship, a vehicle intended to eventually carry humans to the moon and Mars, has successfully ignited one of its Raptor engines while in space, according to SpaceX.

That’s a big deal, explained Garret Reisman, a former NASA astronaut who now advises for SpaceX.

“They’re finicky little beasts — (the Starship rocket engines) — and it’s not so easy to light them up and shut them down and light them up again,” Reisman told CNN.

Starship then aimed to test its limits as it headed toward splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

“We’re going to fly the ship at an aggressive angle of attack once it’s moving slower than the speed of sound,” SpaceX engineer Jessie Anderson said on the company’s livestream. “This means we’ll be flying nose down instead of our usual belly flop orientation during final descent. This will — no doubt — stress the limits of the flaps’ ability to maintain control, but it will be a chance to get real flight data on what our limits actually are.” The “flaps” are small wings attached to the side of the Starship vehicle meant to brace the winds of reentry and help slow the vehicle down.

The company had also removed some protective shielding off the vehicle to see whether the Starship could survive without it.

Starship made a safe landing in the Indian Ocean and remained intact despite the rough landing trajectory.

“Turns out the vehicle had more capability than our calculations predicted, and that is why we test like we fly,” SpaceX engineer Kate Tice said on the livestream for the event.