SpaceX’s Starship, the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket, launched on Thursday from Texas, marked a huge milestone and took Elon Musk’s ambition of colonizing Mars one step further. However, it was later lost while entering back into Earth’s atmosphere.
The lift-off took place from the firm’s starbase situated in Boca Chica, Texas, at 9:25 a.m. ET. Millions saw it through a webcast on Elon Musk-owned X. Remarkably, with this flight, SpaceX attained two milestones beyond the previous tests. First, the Starship reached orbit without any difficulty, and second, it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere after 40 minutes, the first in its history.
Notably, this outing was held to mark the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of the foundation of the company, and it was the third test of Starship. The mega-rocket is expected to play a vital role in NASA’s aim to land astronauts on the moon this decade. Along with this return-to-the-moon plan, Starship is also a crucial part of Elon Musk’s aim to establish a human society on Mars.
Despite its lost connection, the team behind the flight declared that this trip was successful since it was better than the earlier tests. During the live webcast of the event, SpaceX officials said,
This is the furthest and fastest that Starship has ever flown.
Starship flew for less than ten minutes before it was announced that the team had lost communication. Notably, the first-stage booster successfully separated from the upper-stage Starship spacecraft.
The firm was clear that they would not be able to recover the Starship. It was already expected to make a hard landing, and these failures are considered normal by SpaceX. They prioritize the data gathering by spacecraft so that engineers can analyze and repair it for future purposes.
Acknowledging the test, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took to X and wrote,
Starship reached orbital velocity!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2024
Congratulations @SpaceX team!!
