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SpaceX launched another of its giant Starship rockets on a test flight Monday, aiming to travel halfway around the world while releasing mock-up satellites just like last time.
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Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, thundered into the evening sky from the southern tip of Texas. The booster lifted off and made a controlled entry into the Gulf of Mexico as planned, with the spacecraft gliding through space before descending toward the Indian Ocean. Nothing was restored.
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It was the 11th test flight of the full-scale Starship, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk intends to use to send people to Mars. NASA's needs are more pressing. The space agency won't be able to land astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade without the 403-foot (123-meter) Starship, a reusable vehicle designed to carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface and back.
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Instead of staying in Launch Control as usual, Musk said he went outside for the first time to take a look – “in a much more intuitive way.”
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The previous test flight in August, successful after a series of explosive failures, followed the same path and with the same goals. During this time, more maneuvering capabilities were created, especially for the spacecraft. SpaceX has planned a series of tests during the spacecraft's re-entry over the Indian Ocean as practice for future landings at the spaceport.
As before, Starship delivered eight mock-up satellites simulating SpaceX's Starlinks. The entire flight was supposed to last just over an hour and took off from a Starbase near the Mexican border.
SpaceX is modifying its launch pads at Cape Canaveral to accommodate spacecraft as well as much smaller Falcon rockets used to ferry astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station for NASA.
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