SpaceX's Starship V3—still a work in progress—mostly successful on first flight
Fireball
SpaceX has more to prove before flying Starship all the way to low-Earth orbit.
A spacecraft deployed from Starship captured this view of the vehicle in darkness over the South Atlantic Ocean. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX launched the first test flight of its upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster Friday, with mostly positive results.
The powerful rocket, propelled by 33 methane-fueled main engines, climbed away from SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in South Texas at 5:30 pm CDT (6:30 pm EDT; 22:30 UTC) Friday. Within a few seconds, the 408-foot-tall (124-meter) rocket, the largest ever built, cleared the launch tower and turned onto an eastward heading over the Gulf of Mexico.
Starship splashed down on target in the Indian Ocean a little more than an hour later to conclude the first flight of the latest version of SpaceX’s stainless steel mega-rocket. Starship V3 fared better on its debut than the ...
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