by SpaceX’s Starship continued to wow audiences during its third test flight today.
On Thursday (March 14), SpaceX launched Starship for the third time from its Starbase manufacturing and launch facility near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas. Hundreds of rocket chasers and spectators gathered along the beach to watch the test flight, which saw Starship, or “The Ship,” successfully separate from its Super Heavy booster and reach orbital velocity.
Although neither vehicle survived the test flight, SpaceX said the flight was a success after reaching several important milestones during the nearly 65-minute mission. As with previous Starship test flights, the launch produced some incredible photography as the giant rocket sailed through the Texas sky on its way to a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
Related: SpaceX launches massive Starship rocket into space on epic 3rd test flight (video)
Before launch day, Starship cruised past the nearby shores of Boca Chica Beach, leading to some interesting vacation photos for some visitors.
On Wednesday (March 13), Jared Isaacman, commander of the private SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, flew over Starship and the Starbase facility in his MiG-29 fighter jet. Polaris Dawn is the first mission of the Isaacman-funded Polaris Program, which plans to conduct three private flights using SpaceX spacecraft.
As Starship’s engines roared Thursday morning (March 14), cheers filled the air from the crowds gathered along the South Texas shore.
As Starship took off, it broke through the fog covering the shoreline that threatened to obscure the flight across the launch window.
All 33 Super Heavy’s Raptor engines remained burning during the first phase of Starship’s test flight. “Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on today’s successful Starship flight test!” SpaceX write on X in a post posted on March 14, 2024.
Like the first stage of SpaceX’s trusty Falcon 9 rocket, Starship is designed to be reusable, and SpaceX plans to land and relaunch its Super Heavy boosters. When the technology is ready, the company will receive a Super Heavy booster that will return using two “chopstick” weapons on the Starship’s launch tower. For today’s launch, SpaceX attempted no such recovery; Super Heavy IFT-3 was always expected to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX plans to significantly increase the speed of Starship launches in the future. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says the company could launch as many as six Starship missions in the year 2024.
NASA has tapped Starship to land its astronauts on the moon during its Artemis 3 mission, currently scheduled for 2026.
The flight even delighted NASA leadership. “Congratulations to @SpaceX on a successful test flight! A starship is soaring high in the heavens. Together, we’re making great strides through Artemis to return humanity to the moon – then look at Mars,” the head of NASA, Bill Nelson said via X today.
The turnaround for Starship’s next test flight could be much shorter than the wait between number two and today’s flight, given how many milestones SpaceX has been able to achieve. There was a span of seven months between the first test flight and the second, and only four months between the second flight and the third flight today.
Musk has said that Starship will enable humanity to establish settlements on Mars, with 1,000 Starships launched every two years to transport cargo and personnel from Earth to the Red Planet.
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Neither Starship nor the vehicle’s Super Heavy booster survived today’s test. Super Heavy’s engines failed to ignite after the vehicle re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, resulting in a loss of booster.
Meanwhile, the starship reached orbital velocity and entered a sub-orbital coast phase above Earth, during which time it opened its payload bay and tested its cryogenic propellant transfer system which will critical to getting astronauts to the moon and beyond.
The vehicle was expected to splash down in the Indian Ocean 65 minutes after the takeoff, but contact was lost during re-entry.
However, SpaceX leadership said the test was a success. “A huge congratulations to the entire team on this incredible day,” SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell write on X.
