SpaceX's Starship megarocket didn't ace its second-ever test flight Saturday (Nov. 18), but it performed well enough to draw praise from some pretty important people.

Starship lifted off this morning from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, on a test mission that aimed to send its 165-foot-tall (50 meters) upper stage most of the way around the world. 

That didn't happen; the upper stage exploded about 8 minutes into flight. But Starship notched a number of important milestones leading up to that point, as NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted.