SpaceX is blazing forward with latest Starship launch
The third try turned out to be closer to the charm for Elon Musk and SpaceX, as his company's mammoth Starship rocket launched Thursday and traveled about halfway around the Earth before it was lost as it reentered the atmosphere.
The test flight achieved several key milestones in the development of the vehicle, which could alter the future of space transportation and help NASA return astronauts to the moon.
This particular flight was not, by design, intended to make it all the way around the Earth. At 8:25 a.m. Central time, Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever to fly — lifted off from the coast of South Texas. The ascent was smooth, with the upper Starship stage reaching orbital velocities. About 45 minutes after launch, it started reentering the atmosphere, heading toward a bellyflop splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
Live video, conveyed in near real-time via SpaceX's Starlink satellites, showed red-hot gases heating the underside of the vehicle. Then, 49 minutes after launch, communications with Starship ended, and SpaceX later said the vehicle had not survived the reentry, presumably disintegrating and falling into the ocean.
Even so, Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, congratulated SpaceX on what he called a “successful test flight” of the system his agency is counting on for some of its Artemis lunar missions.
SpaceX aims to make both the vehicle's lower rocket booster and the upper spacecraft stage capable of flying over and over again — a stark contrast to the single-launch throwaway rockets that have been used for most of the Space Age.
That reusability gives SpaceX the potential to drive down the cost of lofting satellites and telescopes, as well as people and the things they need to live in space.
Completing most of the short jaunt was a reassuring validation that the rocket's design appears to be sound. Not only is Starship crucial for NASA's lunar plans, it is the key to Musk's pipe dream of sending people to live on Mars.
SpaceX still needs to pull off a series of formidable rocketry firsts before Starship is ready to head to the moon and beyond. Earlier this week, Musk said he hoped for at least six more Starship flights this year, during which some of those experiments may occur.
But if it achieves them all, the company could again revolutionize the space transportation business and leave competitors far behind.
Phil Larson, a White House space adviser during the Obama administration who also previously worked on communication efforts at SpaceX, said Starship's size and reusability had “massive potential to change the game in transportation to orbit. And it could enable whole new classes of missions.”