LEILA FADEL, HOST:
SpaceX seems to have its megarocket back on track after a series of mishaps.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Five.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Five.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Four
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Four.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Three.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Three.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Two.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Two.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: One.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: One.
(SOUNDBITE OF STARSHIP LIFTING OFF)
FADEL: The huge black and silver rocket known as Starship lifted off last night from the SpaceX facility in southern Texas.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED EMPLOYEE: Vehicle is pitching downrange.
FADEL: This was test flight No. 10, and as NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports, it was very different from the last few flights.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: All this year, SpaceX has had problems with Starship. The last three test flights saw the upper stage either explode or disintegrate. Plus, the ship's payload bay door wouldn't open. So this time, once the ship was in space, the company quoted the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," writing on the social media site X, open the pod bay door, Hal.
(CHEERING)
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The door opened, and SpaceX workers on the ground could be heard celebrating on the company's live webcast as a contraption in the spacecraft that webcast commentator Dan Huot said was like a giant PEZ dispenser, started ejecting fake satellites out one by one.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DAN HUOT: The last one has been deployed. Starlink simulator payload complete. Heck, yeah, everybody.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Then the ship made a controlled descent down into the Indian Ocean, as planned, on target and captured on video.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HUOT: There's a buoy.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Oh, my God.
(CHEERING)
HUOT: There's a splashdown.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Splashdown.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: SpaceX wants to use this megarocket to send up satellites and eventually take people to Mars. And it's also a big part of NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon. That's why the space community was closely watching this test flight to see if the streak of failures would end.
Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLASSICAL POPS ORCHESTRA'S "2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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