The two-stage spacecraft, consisting of the Starship vessel mounted atop a towering SpaceX Super Heavy rocket booster, blasted off at about 7:36 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT) from the company’s Starbase launch site on the Gulf Coast of Texas near Brownsville.
SpaceX launched the Starship system with a previously flown Super Heavy booster for the first time, aiming to achieve a key demonstration of its reusability. The 232-foot (71-m) first-stage booster will not attempt a return to its launch pad but target the Gulf of Mexico for a controlled splashdown.
Its last two test flights - in January and March - were cut short moments after liftoff as the vehicle blew to pieces on its ascent, raining debris over parts of the Caribbean and disrupting scores of commercial airline flights in the region.
The previous back-to-back failures occurred in early test-flight phases that SpaceX had easily achieved before, dealing a striking setback to a program that Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who founded the rocket company in 2002, had sought to accelerate this year.
Musk is counting on Starship to fulfill his goal of producing a large, multipurpose next-generation spacecraft capable of sending people and cargo to the moon later this decade and ultimately flying to Mars.
Musk was scheduled to deliver an update on his space exploration ambitions in a speech from Starbase following the test flight, to be livestreamed under the banner slogan “The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary.”
The speech could also offer clues about the trajectory of NASA’s human spaceflight strategy. While Musk has been known to make overly ambitious projections about SpaceX’s development timelines, he has since amassed significantly more sway over the Trump administration’s space agenda.
Picked by NASA in 2021 as the vehicle to return humans to the moon’s surface this decade for the first time in more than 50 years, Starship is expected to play an even bigger role in the U.S. space program. Trump attended a Starship test launch in November and has publicly promoted Musk’s Mars vision.
Trump’s choice to lead NASA, Jared Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut and SpaceX customer for whom Musk advocated, testified before a U.S. Senate committee in April but has not advanced through the full confirmation process, while significant changes loom at the U.S. space agency.
During a tense May 22 White House event with Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, South African-born Musk stood among Trump’s cabinet officials in the room and was pointed out by the U.S. president.
“He actually came here on a different subject: sending rockets to Mars,“ Trump said. “He likes that subject better.”
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( SpaceX Starship launched on ninth test flight after last two blew up )
Also on site :