SpaceX Starship rocket completes landmark third test flight | Wilnesh News

SpaceX launched the third test flight of its Starship rocket into space on Thursday, as the company pushed a new milestone in the development of the giant launch vehicle.

Elon Musk’s company launched Starship from the Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas, at around 9:25 a.m. ET.

The rocket flew farther than previous tests, and the flight lasted about an hour before the Starship broke apart over the Indian Ocean. The company noted that the vehicle did not splash into the water, which is the expected outcome of the flight.

“We lost Ship 28,” SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said in a company webcast.

The flight marks an important step for SpaceX toward completing prototype testing and beginning operational Starship launches.

Musk congratulates his company a post Shortly after launch, it was announced that “Starship reaches orbital speed!”

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson also congratulated SpaceX on “a successful test flight!”

“Starships have taken to the skies. Together, we are taking a giant step past Artemis, returning humans to the moon, and looking toward Mars,” NASA Administrator Nielsen writes in the book. a post on social media.

SpaceX has tested the complete Starship rocket system twice last year, launching in April and November. Two previous launches had progressive but explosive results: While each rocket flew for several minutes, most recently reaching space, both rockets were ultimately destroyed by problems.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday approved SpaceX’s third launch attempt.

Starship systems are designed to be fully reusable and intended to be a new way to transport cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis lunar program.

SpaceX places a strong emphasis on “building on what we’ve learned from previous flights” in its approach to developing Starship. The company says its strategy is focused on “recursive improvements” to its rockets, and even the enthusiastic test flights represent progress toward its goal of fully reusable rockets that could send humans to the moon and Mars.

Musk said last year that he expected the company to spend about $2 billion on Starship development in 2023.

Starship is the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Starship, fully stacked on Super Heavy boosters, is 397 feet tall and about 30 feet in diameter.

The Super Heavy booster is 232 feet tall and is the starting point for the rocket’s journey into space. There are 33 Raptor engines on the bottom, which can produce a total of 16.7 million pounds of thrust, about twice the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. It was first launched late last year.

The company tested several new features during the flight.These include opening and closing the spacecraft’s doors after entering space – which will be how rockets will deploy payloads such as satellites on future missions – and SpaceX confirmed that during a demonstration at NASA, fuel was transferred during the flight. It did not proceed as planned with a demonstration of re-igniting the starship’s engines in space.