The dream of a journey to the Moon is becoming reality: Starship flew to space, but...
SpaceX's Starship rocket, designed to carry astronauts to the Moon and beyond, completed most of its planned trajectory in its third test flight.
BBC
Elon Musk's company SpaceX announced that it has sent its Starship rocket, designed to carry astronauts to the Moon and beyond, into space for the third time. The company stated that Starship performed its longest and most successful test flight to date, but that communication with the rocket was lost.
SpaceX noted that Starship managed to complete almost the entire planned trajectory during the test flight. However, the company later confirmed that the connection with Starship was lost during atmospheric reentry.
Despite this, Starship sent high-resolution images from its orbit in space this time. In the previous two attempts, the launched rockets had exploded. Starship, which is taller than the Statue of Liberty, was launched from SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
Starship was planned to travel in space for 15 minutes after liftoff and return to the atmosphere within 50 minutes, after which it was to land in the Indian Ocean. During SpaceX's live broadcast, the comment, "It was great to see how far the rocket went this time," was made.
The company had previously stated that Starship would likely explode, as it did in the previous two attempts. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk had also said that the rocket would need to be tested hundreds of times without a crew before its first human mission. Musk believes that Starship could initiate interplanetary travel for humans.
Starship was designed with nearly twice the thrust of NASA's most powerful rocket, Artemis.