Following scrubbed launches on Sunday and Monday, SpaceX managed to launch the Starship rocket on its 10th launch flight on Tuesday.
The most powerful rocket ever built blasted off the launchpad at Starbase in southern Texas at 6:30 p.m. local time (7:30 p.m. ET). Here’s footage of the rocket leaving the launchpad:
Space photographer Andrew McCarthy shared this stunning shot of the Starship rocket just seconds into its flight:
Just shy of three minutes into the flight, the upper-stage Starship spacecraft separated from the first-stage Super Heavy booster. You can watch the maneuver below:
The Super Heavy booster then descended before making a controlled landing in the ocean, as planned. Here’s a clip of the booster making its descent:
About 66 minutes after launch, the Starship spacecraft made a controlled splashdown — before exploding — in the Indian Ocean, bringing to a close a flight that SpaceX will deem a huge success.
SpaceX had originally targeted Sunday, August 24, for the 10th launch of Starship, but a technical issue with the ground systems forced the team to call off the launch about 40 minutes from liftoff. Then, on Monday, with just 40 seconds left on the countdown clock, SpaceX scrubbed the launch due to poor weather conditions in the area, specifically, anvil clouds that posed a lightning risk.
The 121-meter-tall Starship first flew in 2023, and once fully tested and certified, NASA will use the vehicle for its Artemis moon missions, carrying crew and cargo to the lunar surface. Looking further ahead, the rocket could also be used to carry the first humans to Mars, possibly in the 2030s.
But there’s still a lot of testing and refinement required before then. To ramp up the frequency of test flights, SpaceX is also planning to launch the Starship from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first Starship launch from Kennedy could take place before the end of the year.
