SpaceX Starship Sticks the Landing -- Then Blows Up Anyway

After flying prototypes of its Starship twice to high altitude in February, only to see the rockets crash land when they tried to return to base, on Wednesday, March 3, everything came together for SpaceX. As with the previous launch attempts of Starship prototypes SN8 and SN9, SpaceX's SN10 lifted off smoothly Wednesday evening from its launch pad in South Texas, and it flew to about 10 kilometers altitude before executing its patented "belly flop" maneuver and floating horizontally back to Earth, exposing as much surface area as possible to slow its descent.