SpaceX launched the first test flight of its upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster Friday, with mostly positive results.<\/p>\n
The powerful rocket, propelled by 33 methane-fueled main engines, climbed away from SpaceX\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s stainless steel mega-rocket. Starship V3 fared better on its debut than the first flights of Starship V1<\/a> and V2 in 2023 and 2025<\/a>. Both past versions of Starship broke apart during launch on their inaugural flights.<\/p>\n SpaceX officials appeared pleased with the performance of Starship V3 on Friday. Elon Musk, the company\u2019s founder and CEO, congratulated his engineers with a post on X: \u201cCongratulations SpaceX team on an epic first Starship V3 launch & landing! You scored a goal for humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCongrats and a huge thank you to the SpaceX team that always delivers,\u201d Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX\u2019s second in command, wrote in an X post. \u201cThis was an incredible first flight of a brand new vehicle. Our collective future flying amongst the stars has become so much closer.\u201d<\/p>\n Leaders at NASA, relying on SpaceX to provide Starship as a human-rated Moon lander<\/a>, were closely watching the launch. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was in Texas to witness the launch in person. He lauded SpaceX for a \u201chell of a V3 Starship launch.\u201d<\/p>\n Starship\u2019s 12th test flight was a long time coming<\/a>. The last Starship test flight took off last October<\/a>. The gap of more than seven months was the longest interval between Starship flights since the program\u2019s first full-scale launch in April 2023. SpaceX used the time to complete construction and activation of a second launch pad at Starbase as engineers steered Starship V3 through ground testing, which had its own share of setbacks<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX launched the first test flight of its upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster Friday, with mostly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-456599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}