Share and Follow
The most formidable and powerful rocket ever constructed has taken to the skies, marking a pivotal moment for SpaceX as the company tests its capabilities before aiming to return humans to the moon.
Dubbed Starship Flight 12, this ambitious launch was executed from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas on Friday night, demonstrating the company’s cutting-edge aerospace technology.
Although the launch achieved space entry, it wasn’t entirely flawless. The Starship encountered an issue as it lost one of its six advanced ‘Raptor’ engines, necessitating the remaining engines to operate longer than planned to maintain the mission’s trajectory.
This fully reusable spacecraft, composed of two parts and intended for both crewed and cargo missions, operates without a human crew and is navigated remotely by SpaceX’s expert team.
The mission, Flight 12, serves as a trial for Starship’s Version 3, showcasing several enhancements over previous iterations. These include more efficient Raptor 3 engines, improved fuel systems, and enhanced thermal protection, all informed by past test flight experiences.
Musk and his team are eyeing this version of Starship as the one NASA astronauts will use as their lunar lander for the Artemis program. It will carry astronauts to the moon’s surface as soon as 2028 when Artemis IV is scheduled to take off.
SpaceX’s long-term dream for Starship V3 is to send both humans and cargo to Mars to build the first self-sustaining city on the Red Planet. Starship was designed to be refueled in orbit so it can make the long journey to Mars.
Friday’s test flight is a suborbital mission, meaning it will not go into full orbit, and was said by SpaceX to be the first pivotal step in testing how the new Starship’s hardware behaves under real flight conditions.
This is a breaking story. More details to follow.Â
SpaceX Starship 12, the company’s third version of the craft, launched successfully at 6.30pm ET on May 22
SpaceX Starship 12, the company’s third version of the craft, launched successfully at 6.30pm ET on May 22
SpaceX Starship 12, the company’s third version of the craft, launched successfully at 6.30pm ET on May 22
SpaceX Starship 12, the company’s third version of the craft, launched successfully at 6.30pm ET on May 22
Starship 12 featured two key parts, the ‘Super Heavy,’ the bottom booster stage with 33 powerful Raptor engines, and the Starship, the upper part sitting on top of the booster that has its own engines. The spacecraft is what would carry astronauts to space.
Overall, the rocket stands as tall as a 50-story building.
The test flight had several key goals, starting with a successful liftoff from Starbase, Texas at 6.30pm ET.
From there the Super Heavy booster separated after a few minutes of flight, conducted a ‘boostback’ burn to slow itself down and then performed a landing burn to splash down gently in the Gulf of America.
Unlike previous SpaceX missions, this rocket booster did not try to land back at the launch site as the company’s other reusable rockets have.
Meanwhile, the upper Starship stage continued into space, where it successfully deployed 22 dummy Starlink satellites 20 minutes into the flight.
Cameras inside the craft captured the moment as each communications panel slid out of the cargo hatch and was sent off into orbit as the SpaceX crew back on Earth cheered and chanted ‘USA’ from the company’s control center in Texas.
SpaceX did note during the flight that a scheduled restart of one of the craft’s engines while in space was cancelled due to the loss of one of Starship’s six engines during launch.
Starship 12 successfully reached space despite the loss of one of its six engines on May 22
The SpaceX spacecraft successfully launched 22 fake Starlink satellites (Pictured) during its tests in space
Flight 12 will then re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at high speed, testing its heat shields, in which one panel was deliberately removed to see how the craft would hold up under such stress.
The whole flight is scheduled to take roughly one hour.
Starship 12 was initially set to launch on Thursday, but the mission was postponed after several attempts to fix a mechanical issue just 40 seconds from takeoff.
Musk revealed after the failed attempt that a hydraulic pin holding the tower arm in place did not retract from the craft.