SpaceX launches its biggest rocket yet in test flight from Texas | SpaceX
SpaceX started The biggest, most powerful Starship ever, an upgraded version that NASA is relying on to land astronauts on the moon, went on a test flight Friday.
The redesigned mega rocket made its debut two days after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced he would take the company public. The plane, launched from the southern tip of Texas, carried 20 fake Starlink satellites to be sent to the other side of the world.
This is the 12th test flight of the rocket Musk is building to one day take humans to Mars. But first comes the Moon and NASA’s Artemis program.
The last of the older space-faring Starships took off in October. SpaceX’s third-generation Starship (a souped-up version called V3) has lifted off from a brand new launch pad at Starbase near the Mexican border. Last minute pad problems prevented the launch attempt on Thursday evening.
SpaceX was hoping to avoid the fireworks it experienced last year when back-to-back launches sent mid-air explosions showering debris into the Atlantic. Previous flights had also ended in flames.
At 407 feet (124 meters) tall, the latest model dwarfs the older Starship series by several feet and delivers more engine thrust.
Starship is designed to be fully reusable, with giant mechanical arms on the launch pads to catch the returning rocket stages. But in this last test run nothing could be saved. The Gulf of Mexico marked the end of the road for the redesigned first stage booster, and the Indian Ocean marked the end of the road for spacecraft and satellite demos.
NASA is paying billions of dollars to SpaceX, as well as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, to provide lunar landers that will be used to land Artemis astronauts on the moon.
Two companies are competing to be first.
While Starship has reached the limits of space with multiple flights lasting an hour or more, Bezos’s Blue Moon has yet to take off, though a prototype is being prepared for a moonshot later this year.
NASA is following up the successful flight around the Moon by four astronauts in April with a docking attempt in orbit around the Earth planned for next year. For this Artemis III mission, astronauts will practice docking Orion capsules into Starship, Blue Moon, or both.
Two astronauts (Artemis IV) can land on the moon in 2028 using Starship or Blue Moon (whichever is safer and ready before). This will be NASA’s first crewed Moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972. This time the target is a lunar base near the south pole of the moon, where astronauts as well as robots are located.
