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SpaceX launched the third test flight of its Starship rocket on Thursday and reached space, as the company pushed development of the mammoth vehicle to new milestones.
Elon Musk's company launched Starship around 9:25 a.m. ET from its Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas.
The rocket flew farther than previous tests, and the flight lasted about an hour before Starship crashed over the Indian Ocean, the company said.
Musk congratulated his company in a post shortly after launch, announcing that “Starship reached orbital speed!”
The SpaceX Starship spacecraft lifts off from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on March 14, 2024.
Chandan Khanna | AFP | fake images
SpaceX has flown the entire Starship rocket system in two tests last year, with launches in April and November. The two previous launches had progressive but explosive results: although each of the rockets flew for a few minutes and the most recent one reached space, both vehicles were eventually destroyed due to problems.
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The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday cleared SpaceX to make a third launch attempt.
The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to become a new method of transporting cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multimillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA's Artemis lunar program.
SpaceX strongly emphasizes the approach of leveraging “what we have learned from previous flights” in its approach to developing Starship. The company says its strategy focuses on a “recursive improvement” of the rocket, where even test flights with excellent results represent progress toward its goal of a fully reusable rocket that can take people to the Moon and Mars.
Musk said last year that he expected the company to spend about $2 billion developing Starship in 2023.
The astonishing size of the starship
The SpaceX Starship spacecraft lifts off from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on March 14, 2024.
Chandan Khanna | afp | fake images
Starship is the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked atop the Super Heavy booster, Starship measures 397 feet tall and approximately 30 feet in diameter.
The Super Heavy booster, which measures 232 feet tall, is what begins the rocket's journey into space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust, about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust on NASA's Space Launch System rocket, which was first launched at late last year.
The 165-foot-tall Starship itself has six Raptor engines: three for use in Earth's atmosphere and three for operation in the vacuum of space.
The rocket runs on liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The entire system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant to launch.
Objectives for the third flight
There are no people on board this attempt to reach space with Starship. Company leadership has previously emphasized that SpaceX hopes to fly hundreds of Starship missions before the rocket launches with any crew.
SpaceX intended to surpass the almost eight-minute flight time of the second launch and complete new milestones. SpaceX and the FAA conducted an investigation into the problems with the November launch, and as a result, the company made changes to the monster rocket before the third attempt.
The company outlined several new capabilities it intends to demonstrate on this flight. These include opening and closing the spacecraft door once in space (which would be how the rocket deploys payloads like satellites on future missions) and transferring fuel during flight in a NASA demonstration, as well like restarting Starship's engines while in space. .
