Nearly two months after an explosion sent flaming debris raining down on the Turks and Caicos, SpaceX launched another mammoth Starship rocket on a test flight Thursday to release mock satellites into space.
The 403-foot (123-meter) rocket blasted off from Texas a little before sunset. SpaceX caught the first-stage booster back at the pad with giant mechanical arms, with the spacecraft continuing eastward toward a controlled entry over the Indian Ocean, half a world away.
The space-skimming flight was expected to last an hour, carrying out the satellite delivery test left undone during January’s failed demo.
NASA kept close watch on the action. The space agency has booked Starship to land its astronauts on the moon later this decade. SpaceX’s Elon Musk is aiming for Mars with Starship, the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket.
Like last time, Starship had four mock satellites to eject once the craft reached space on this eighth test flight as a practice for future missions. They resembled SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites, thousands of which currently orbit Earth, and were meant to fall back down following their brief taste of space.
Starship’s flaps, computers and fuel system were redesigned in preparation for the next big step: returning the spacecraft to the launch site just like the booster.
During the last demo, SpaceX captured the booster at the launch pad, but the spacecraft blew up several minutes later over the Atlantic. No injuries or major damage were reported.
According to an investigation that remains ongoing, leaking fuel triggered a series of fires that shut down the spacecraft’s engines. The on-board self-destruct system kicked in as planned.
SpaceX said it made several improvements to the spacecraft following the accident, and the Federal Aviation Administration recently cleared Starship once more for launch.
Starships soar out of the southernmost tip of Texas near the Mexican border. SpaceX is building another Starship complex at Cape Canaveral, Florida, home to the company’s smaller Falcon rockets that ferry astronauts and satellites to orbit.
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