SpaceX Starship Deploys Mock Satellites in Successful Test (3)

SpaceX’s upgraded Starship successfully deployed mock satellites and returned to Earth largely unscathed, though its booster spun out of control and broke apart over the Gulf of Mexico.

The gigantic rocket’s twelfth major test flight was a successful, if slightly rough and incomplete, debut of the vehicle, which is critical to Elon Musk’s efforts to scale his rocket business into an artificial intelligence and satellite communications empire.

The two-tier rocket system, made up of the Super Heavy Booster and the Starship spacecraft, thundered off the launchpad at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas at 5:30 p.m. local time ...