SpaceX’s Starship rocket reached Earth orbit for the first time, though not without some drama along the way.
The company’s mega-rocket launched into space from South Texas early Monday morning and the take off ticked all the early checkboxes for a successful launch. But shortly after the upper stage of the spacecraft separated, it lost one of its six Raptor engines.
While Starship could still reach orbit without one engine, the company initially called off the attempt, only to decide to keep pushing just a few minutes later.
Reaching orbit is a critical milestone that could let SpaceX start using Starship for regular commercial missions, and, importantly, inch closer to its goal of making the mega-rocket fully reusable. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is orienting the entire company around Starship, which has become central to the company’s plans to operate moon missions for NASA, and far-out ideas like putting data center satellites in orbit.
Prior to the launch, SpaceX had planned to have the Starship upper stage orbit the Earth six times over nine hours while deploying 26 third-generation Starlinks into the satellite company’s constellation of internet satellites. It’s not immediately clear if any of that plan was changed due to the delayed entry into Earth orbit.
The company was also able to make progress on returning the Super Heavy booster stage of the rocket back to its launchpad. After separating from the upper stage of Starship a few minutes into the flight, the booster returned to the Gulf coast and performed a simulated landing over the water. It was the cleanest simulated landing SpaceX has performed with the V3 version of Starship, which it started testing in May.
This story is developing…
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