SpaceX successfully launched its massive Starship rocket, the most powerful launch vehicle ever built, on Thursday after federal regulators approved the company’s plans for a third test flight. The rocket reached heights and speeds not previously recorded, but then contact was lost as it hurtled toward Earth.
This launch was carried out from the base near Boca Chica beach, the coastal strip of the Gulf of Mexico, located at the southern tip of Texas.
The Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster rocket passed a crucial moment in the mission: stage separation. The Super Heavy rocket consumed most of its fuel and separated from the Starship, the Super Heavy’s upper stage.
The fate of the Starship is unknown at this time. The teams lost contact with the vehicle after plummeting toward Earth and re-entering the atmosphere.
The ship apparently passed several crucial stages. But it is not known if she reached the ocean complete.
SpaceX lost two key pieces of communication at the same time: contact with Starlink, SpaceX’s Internet service, and with TDRSS, the data tracking and relay satellite system.
The loss of both at the same time suggests that the starship could have broken up.
“So far, everything has been going very well,” he said. «Today we were trying to know: how do we get Starship to survive orbital speed, atmospheric entry? And we hope to find out soon.
Space These doors will have to open on future flights if Starship deploys satellites.
SpaceX sees the Starship system as crucial to its founding mission: taking humans to Mars for the first time. And, more importantly, NASA has chosen Starship as the lander that will transport its astronauts to the lunar surface on the Artemis III mission, scheduled for liftoff in September 2026.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said that the primary goal of these first test flights is to take Starship to orbital speeds, speeds fast enough to allow the spacecraft to enter a stable orbit around Earth. Typically, such a feat requires speeds in excess of 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour).
However, Starship did not attempt to enter orbit on this flight. The spacecraft’s goal on this mission was to make a crash landing in the Indian Ocean, hopefully more than 370 kilometers (230 miles) away from the nearest land mass, according to documents released by the Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches.
Starship’s goal
NASA wants to use Starship to carry out the final leg of the journey to take astronauts back to the Moon for the first time in five decades as part of its Artemis program. The space agency awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract in 2021 to do the work, and signed another $1 billion deal later.
Starship is also the linchpin of SpaceX’s goal to put humans on Mars. The company’s founding purpose is to turn humans into a multiplanetary species, sending them to live on other planets in case the Earth is no longer suitable for life.
That task would require a truly enormous rocket.
«We are trying to build something capable of creating a permanent base on the Moon and a city on Mars; That’s why it’s so big,” Elon Musk said in October.
Whether that goal is economically, technologically and politically viable remains to be seen. But Musk and SpaceX have gained a base of hardcore fans who support this idea.
Other items on Starship’s agenda:
- Send paying customers (or space tourists) into deep space. At least one client, a Japanese billionaire, has already signed up.
- Launch batches of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which broadcast internet around the world.
- Launch new scientific instruments, such as space telescopes.
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