Jeff Bezos believes his space company Blue Origin will be bigger than $2 trillion Amazon Before losing communication, Starship was set to reach space and then travel halfway around the Earth before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean about an hour after liftoff. As with each previous flight, SpaceX aims to push development further by assessing additional Starship capabilities, including tests of its heatshield tiles and the trajectory of its intense reentry. Eric Gay | AP SpaceX's mega rocket Starship launches for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. Starship is critical to the company's plans, even with its $350 billion valuation and already dominant position in the space industry. Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on the Super Heavy booster, Starship stands 403 feet tall and is about 30 feet in diameter. SpaceX has flown the full Starship rocket system on six spaceflight tests so far since April 2023, at a steadily increasing cadence. The Super Heavy booster, which stands 232 feet tall, is what begins the rocket's journey to 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 of NASA's Space Launch System rocket, which launched for the first time in 2022. Starship itself, at 171 feet tall, has six Raptor engines — three for use while in the Earth's atmosphere and three for operating in the vacuum of space. The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The full system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant for launch. Eric Gay | AP SpaceX's mega rocket Starship and booster separate during a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. The Starship flying on this launch, tagged as Ship 33, also represents a second-generation version of the vehicle, called "Block 2." SpaceX noted that the "significant upgrades" to this vehicle include changes to the flaps on the vehicle's nose, redesigns of its propulsion system to boost performance, an enhanced flight computer, 30 cameras placed along the vehicle for monitoring the rocket and a reinforced heat shield. Additionally, the booster for this flight attempt features a reused Raptor engine. That engine flew during the fifth test flight last year. The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to become a new method of flying cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA's Artemis moon program.. Also on CNBC