SpaceX’s Starship rocket, the largest and most powerful in history, has successfully completed its third launch after the first two attempts ended in explosions.
The success of the mission is a relief for NASA, which depends on the Starship for the return of astronauts to the lunar surface, scheduled for September 2026. For Elon Musk, founder and leader of SpaceX, it represents a milestone to protect its hegemony in the global satellite launch market.
The rocket took off at 2:25 p.m. (Spanish peninsular time) from the SpaceX launch base in Boca Chica, in southern Texas (USA). Two minutes and 44 seconds later, it successfully completed the separation maneuver between the two rocket modules. Seven minutes later, the lower module landed in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, something that had not been achieved in the two previous launches.
The mission will end around 3:30 p.m., when the upper module falls into the Indian Ocean northeast of Madagascar.
The lower module, called Super Heavy, is a silver cylinder powered by 33 motors that have given the rocket the thrust necessary for takeoff and ascent in the lower layers of the atmosphere.
The upper module, called Starship like the rocket assembly, is a black spacecraft that can transport astronauts, satellites or any other cargo. This is the ship in which two astronauts from NASA’s Artemis 3 mission must reach the lunar surface in 2026, the first two to set foot on the Moon since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.
The two modules are nine meters in diameter and between them they reach 122 meters in height, making Starship the largest rocket ever built. It is also the most powerful, with its ability to place 150-ton loads in low Earth orbit.
Both modules are designed to be recovered and reused, just like components from previous SpaceX rockets. With this strategy, Elon Musk’s company has managed to lower the cost of launches and dominate the world rocket market, at the expense – among others – of the European Ariane rockets.
The Starship will allow SpaceX to further lower costs at a time when the number of satellites being launched into orbit is increasing. For Elon Musk, it will also accelerate the deployment of the Starlink satellite constellation, which aims to offer internet connectivity from anywhere in the world.
The first launch of the Starship, in April 2023, ended catastrophically with the explosion of the rocket four minutes after takeoff without the two modules having been separated.
In the second launch, in November, the modules separated but both ended up exploding in the air.
SpaceX presented the two launches as successes since they allowed for improvement thanks to the lessons learned. SpaceX’s method consists precisely of testing new rockets and ships in extreme situations in which they are destined to fail in order to improve them based on the errors.
The third launch has proposed more ambitious objectives than the first two, whose main objective was to test the separation of the two modules. This time, the objectives include a fuel transfer operation during the mission, the first reignition of a Raptor engine (the new engines that SpaceX has developed for the Starship) and opening and closing the cargo hold door (a maneuver necessary to place satellites in orbit).
After today’s launch, SpaceX intends to carry out “at least six more flights this year,” Elon Musk said on the social network X.
These launches, and others to take place over the next two years, should increase Starship’s reliability and demonstrate that it can safely take astronauts to the Moon and return them to Earth.
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