Five years ago, on March 3rd, 2021, Starship SN10 lifted off from what would eventually come to be known as the city of Starbase, Texas. Twenty nine days before that, Starship SN9, AKA "Eileen" (as in "I lean"), a fun community nickname, had crashed upon landing due to the failed ignition of a single engine during its landing attempt at the end of its 10 km test flight. Fortunately, Elon Musk and SpaceX already had a new plan in mind to address the shortcomings of that flight.

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Jokes aside, the “Pull Up” method, in a nutshell, basically meant that instead of being entirely dependant on the successful relight of only the 2 engines necessary for a proper belly flop and landing maneuver, SN10 would light 3 engines, and in the case of a failed ignition of one of the engines, there would still be 2 more engines, which would be sufficient to guide the ship through a successful belly flop and landing.

So, less than a month after the successful launch, but failed landing of Eileen (which still stands as the shortest turnaround time for any Starbase launch to date), Starship SN10 lifted off into the skies of Southern Texas.

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At around four and a half minutes into the flight, SN10 gracefully transitioned from vertical flight and hover at an altitude of 10 km to a horizontal orientation for its descent back toward the wetlands of Southern Texas.

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The dramatic transition from horizontal back to vertical orientation as the ship neared the end of its test flight was a spectacular sight to behold. All three engines re-lit successfully, one gave way as intended to let the other two gracefully slow the descent, and the ship landed upright under the power of a single engine.

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The landing wasn’t without issue though, and the ship touched down just a bit harder than planned. Although the prototype landing legs all deployed successfully, and some were slightly crushed, as was their design, the ship rebounded, but eventually came to rest upright on Mother Earth, albeit with a slight lean.

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What observers didn’t know until a few minutes after touchdown was that SN10 would be the first of its kind to land, then (unintentionally) take to the skies once again, and become the first Starship to leave terra firma for a second time.

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Following SN10’s hard touchdown, an uncontrolled propellant leak and fire started, which would eventually rupture the propellant tanks, causing the rapid unscheduled disassembly of the ship, thwarting the best efforts of the little fire suppression system that tried its best to save the day.

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Despite the loss of the ship, SN10’s flight is generally regarded as the first successful landing of a Starship. Roughly 2 months later, Starship SN15 performed another test flight, and to the credit of the hard working engineers at SpaceX, it landed successfully… without performing an unplanned “hop.”

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