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Between tests of his Crew Dragon spacecraft, regular launches for commercial customers and the imminent second launch of the massive Falcon Heavy rocket, SpaceX has a whole lot of trouble getting ready these days. In spite of all this, the Starship program is still in development, which (hopefully) will one day create a spaceship that can travel through our solar system and perhaps even to nearby stars.
Currently, the Starship does not exist, but a small-scale version, called Starhopper, does exist and has just reached a milestone. The spacecraft the size of a pint performed its first official "jump test", lighting its engines and raising its launch pad briefly while powerful fasteners prevented it from flying toward the sky.
A jump test is not like a normal rocket launch. The spacecraft is not yet ready for space travel, but SpaceX still has to test its engines and other vital systems to see how they respond to real-world stress. As such, the Starhopper was attached to its launch pad for the duration of the jump and, as Elon Musk notes in a tweet, she "has reached its limit", which indicates that she did this that she was supposed to do.
SpaceX did not talk much about how this first jump test was done, but Musk noted "all the ecological systems", which is a nice way to say nothing was broken.
A full version of SpaceX's spacecraft will no longer be available for a while, but this small test vehicle will pave the way for larger test flights and large-scale launches. Musk and SpaceX argue that Starship is the preferred vehicle for manned missions to Mars and beyond, and while much remains to be done before that happens, progress is certainly being made.
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