SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket launched from south Texas on Thursday for its fourth test toward orbit to survive a fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, where it broke apart last time.
The company’s Starbase launch site at Boca Chica Village on the Gulf Coast of Texas launched the two-stage spacecraft, which included the Starship cruise vessel and its Super Heavy rocket booster. Elon Musk’s company’s test-to-failure rocket development program continues with this trip.
Starship, approximately 400 feet (122 meters) tall, depicts SpaceX’s future satellite launch and astronaut business. It is cheaper and more powerful than the Falcon 9 rocket. NASA will utilize it in the next few years to place the first astronauts on the moon since 1972.
Each Starship rocket has advanced further in its testing objectives before exploding or destroying in the atmosphere.
The rocket’s initial launch in April 2023 burst 25 miles (40 km) above earth. Next November, Starship reached space for the first time but detonated.
starship flew farther in March and broke apart in Earth’s atmosphere while returning from space halfway around the world.
The rocket’s Thursday flight repeats its earlier test but aims farther.
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Photo: Gonzalo Fuentes
The Super Heavy rocket system’s first stage ignited its 33 Raptor engines to lift off, then separated from the Starship second stage to launch into space.
Super Heavy is anticipated to restart its engines and return to the Gulf of Mexico for a “soft splash-down” to imitate a land touchdown.
Starship will travel around the world to the Indian Ocean to try again to survive atmospheric re-entry, which failed in March.
The rocket has hundreds of tiny black tiles to protect it from the tremendous heat of hypersonic entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
“The main goal of this mission is to get much deeper into the atmosphere during reentry, ideally through maximum heating,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted Saturday.
SpaceX’s Starship development is crucial to NASA’s 2026 moon return in a race with China, which hopes to fly astronauts there by 2030. China has landed a sample recovery mission on the moon’s far side for the second time.
Despite being faster than other rocket programs, Starship’s development has been slower than Musk expected. The Japanese millionaire who paid to fly Starship around the moon canceled his flight last week due to timetable issues.
