SpaceX sends Starship towards orbit carrying 26 new Starlink satellites
SpaceX on Monday launched Starship towards orbit for the first time, aiming to complete six full laps around Earth in a major test of the rocket system it hopes to use for NASA's Artemis moon programme. The flight was also carrying 26 of the latest Starlink satellites to add to the 11,000 older satellites already providing internet service.
The company said all systems needed to work properly before it could give the critical "go" for orbit. A "no-go" call would end the mission early in the Indian Ocean. If successful, the nearly 10-hour flight would mark Starship's most ambitious mission yet as SpaceX pushes to certify it for orbital flight and future missions to the moon and Mars.
The 407-foot rocket, described by the company as the biggest and most powerful ever built, lifted off from Texas' southern tip on its 14th full-scale launch in three years. Earlier test flights had gone no farther than the Indian Ocean halfway around the world, often ending in fiery crashes after briefly reaching space. This time, SpaceX set out to send Starship around the globe from an altitude of 275 kilometres, with the mission ending in a splashdown in the Pacific near Chile. The first-stage booster was not meant to return to the Starbase launch site and was instead due to fall into the Gulf of Mexico within minutes of liftoff.
SpaceX has said it wants to make sure everything works before attempting a return to Starbase. Musk said at a business summit earlier this month that if the spacecraft broke apart over land and rained debris on people, "our popularity would diminish very rapidly". He added, "That's why we're being extremely cautious here."
If the orbital debut goes well, the next Starship is expected to return to the launch pad, where giant mechanical arms would try to catch the hovering spacecraft. Musk said he gives that attempt "even or slightly better odds". If the catch succeeds, SpaceX plans to fly the spacecraft again by the end of this year or early next year. Starship was designed from the start to be fully reusable to help lower launch costs. SpaceX recovered the last Starship from the Indian Ocean in July, and engineers changed the heat shield on the newly launched vehicle after inspecting the recovered spacecraft, which is being towed back to Starbase.
SpaceX is working to get Starship certified for orbital flight, which it sees as a key step for moon and Mars travel. NASA's Artemis III mission could take place as early as next summer and is planned as a triple-launch docking exercise in orbit around Earth involving an Orion capsule carrying astronauts and rival lunar landers. Under the plan described by the company, Jeff Bezos' Blue Moon would launch first, followed by Orion, which would move in for a link-up, and then Musk's Starship would launch to dock with Orion after Blue Moon separates.
The next mission, Artemis IV, is scheduled no earlier than 2028 and would see astronauts land on the moon in either Blue Moon or Starship, depending on which is ready first. Later moon missions would alternate between the two landers. Musk first developed Starship for Mars, with plans to launch large numbers of them carrying the planet's first settlers. For now, he plans to focus on the moon and on using Starship to carry satellites into orbit in large numbers, gradually replacing the company's more fragile Falcon 9 rocket within the next few years. A second Starship launch site is nearing completion at Florida's Kennedy Space Centre, and a third is planned for Louisiana.
The mission was therefore both a test of Starship's readiness for future NASA moon flights and a step in SpaceX's broader plans for reusable space travel, satellite launches and eventually Mars missions.
