SpaceX’s mammoth Starship rocket blasted off Friday on another test flight stretching halfway around the world, this time carrying 20 of the most advanced Starlinks.
Towering 407 feet (124 meters), Starship soared from the company’s base at the southern tip of Texas. NASA monitored the flight, a critical step toward using the Starship as a lunar lander for moon crews.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX replaced six of the 33 engines on the first-stage booster after they failed to ignite last week, resulting in a last-second launch abort. The previous Starship flight in May also experienced engine trouble, which prevented the booster from making a controlled return.
It was the 13th flight of the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket, and the second this year of the new version dubbed V3. Like the previous demo that climbed as high as 125 miles (200 kilometers), neither the booster nor spacecraft was being saved, instead ditching into the sea. The booster was bound for the Gulf of Mexico and the stainless steel, retro-looking spacecraft for the Indian Ocean more than 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) from where the hourlong flight began.
The Starlinks had a job to do before reentering over the Indian Ocean. Their solo-flying time was expected to be no more than 20 minutes.
Once deployed in space from the Starship’s Pez-like dispenser, the Starlinks were going to extend their solar wings and antennas, and attempt to communicate via lasers with older Starlink models already in orbit. With more than 10,000 Starlinks currently providing internet, SpaceX boasts the world’s largest satellite constellation.
Six of the newly launched Starlinks carried cameras to photograph Starship’s heat shield. The heat shield was also equipped with sensors to measure the extreme pressure placed on the spacecraft during launch. Most of the heat shield’s thermal tiles were black, but some were deliberately painted white to simulate missing tiles, part of an experiment to test the shield’s robustness.
SpaceX wants to make sure Starship’s heat shield can withstand the heat of entry before trying to return it to the Starbase launch pad near the Texas-Mexico border. The company already has used a pair of giant mechanical arms at the pad to capture a Starship booster. The company plans to do the same with the actual spacecraft, which is designed to be totally reusable.
NASA needs Starship to wrap up testing and reach orbit soon so the Artemis III astronauts — three Americans and one Italian — can practice docking their capsule with it next year.
Starship is also the vehicle with which Musk intends to build a city on Mars. He’s already booking tourist trips to Mars, as well as the moon.
The latest test flight was delayed first by the July 16 launch abort, then again on Thursday by thick clouds from Tropical Storm Bertha.
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