SpaceX launched the first test flight of its advanced Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster on Friday, with mostly positive results.
The powerful rocket, powered by 33 methane-fueled main engines, lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in South Texas at 5:30 p.m. CDT (6:30 p.m. EDT; 22:30 UTC) Friday. Within seconds, the 408-foot-tall (124 m) rocket, the largest ever launched, passed the launch tower and headed east over the Gulf of Mexico.
Starship landed on target in the Indian Ocean a little more than an hour later, ending the maiden flight of the latest version of SpaceX’s stainless steel mega-rocket. Starship V3 performed better in its first flight than Starship V1 and V2, scheduled for first flights in 2023 and 2025. Both previous versions of Starship broke up during launch on their inaugural flights.
SpaceX officials appeared pleased with Starship V3’s performance on Friday. Company founder and CEO Elon Musk congratulated his engineers with a post on X: “Congratulations to the SpaceX team on the spectacular first Starship V3 launch and landing! You scored a goal for humanity.”
“Congratulations and a huge thank you to the SpaceX team for the work they always do,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s second in command, wrote in an X post. “This was an incredible first flight of a brand new vehicle. Our collective future flying among the stars just got that much closer.”
NASA leaders, counting on SpaceX to provide Starship as a human-rated moon lander, were watching the launch closely. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was in Texas to witness the launch in person. He praised SpaceX for the “amazing V3 Starship launch.”
The 12th test flight of Starship took a long time. The last Starship test flight took off last October. The gap of more than seven months was the longest gap between Starship flights since the program’s first full-scale launch in April 2023. SpaceX used this time to complete construction and activation of the second launch pad at Starbase as engineers powered Starship V3 through ground testing, which had its share of setbacks.
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