SpaceX has launched its biggest, most powerful Starship yet on a test flight, an upgraded version that NASA is counting on to land astronauts on the Moon.
The redesigned mega rocket made its debut on Friday two days after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced he is taking the company public. It blasted off from the southern tip of Texas, carrying 20 mock Starlink satellites for release halfway around the world.
It’s the 12th test flight of the rocket that Musk is building to get people to Mars one day. But first comes the moon and NASA’s Artemis program.
The last of the old space-skimming Starships lifted off in October. SpaceX’s third-generation Starship — a souped-up version dubbed V3 — soared from a brand-new launch pad at Starbase, near the Mexican border. Last-minute pad issues thwarted Thursday evening’s launch attempt.
SpaceX was hoping to avoid the fireworks it experienced during back-to-back launches last year when midair explosions rained wreckage down on the Atlantic. Earlier flights also ended in flames.
At 407 feet, the latest model eclipses the older Starship lines by several feet and packs more engine thrust.
The revamped booster sports fewer but bigger and stronger grid fins for steering it back to Earth following liftoff, and a larger and more robust fuel transfer line to feed the 33 main engines.
This fuel line is the size of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first-stage booster. The retro-looking, stainless steel spacecraft also has more of everything — more cameras and more navigation and computer power — as well as docking cones for future rendezvous and moon missions.
Starship is meant to be fully reusable, with giant mechanical arms at the launch pads to catch the returning rocket stages. But on this latest trial run, nothing was being recovered.
The Gulf of Mexico marked the end of the road for the redesigned first-stage booster, and the Indian Ocean for the spacecraft and its satellite demos.
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