New Delhi:

Elon Musk and SpaceX have shared stunning pictures of the Earth captured by Space X’s Starship as it completed its first successful flight through space on Thursday, in what was its third attempt. The Starship, which is the world’s most powerful rocket, reached its farthest and fastest flight during this test launch, although it was lost upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, according to SpaceX.

High-definition footage from an onboard camera showed the Starship in space, showing the curve of the Earth in the background as it soared at speeds exceeding 26,000 km per hour.  

“Wild that this is a real picture,” tweeted SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, sharing an image of the rocket in space. SpaceX also shared several images on their official X page, captioning them, “ship in space.”

Wild that this is a real picture pic.twitter.com/V2LWqTOydY

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 16, 2024

Ship in space pic.twitter.com/ge5vJ0q9jW

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 16, 2024

Following the mission, NASA administrator Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on their “successful test flight”. “Congrats to @SpaceX on a successful test flight! Starship has soared into the heavens. Together, we are making great strides through Artemis to return humanity to the Moon—then look onward to Mars,” he wrote on X.

Congrats to @SpaceX on a successful test flight! Starship has soared into the heavens. Together, we are making great strides through Artemis to return humanity to the Moon—then look onward to Mars. https://t.co/VXq8Vp1sAc

— Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) March 14, 2024

The take-off took place from SpaceX’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:25 am local time (6:55 pm IST), and was streamed live on X to millions of viewers. 

The Starship, standing at 397 feet tall (90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty), is designed to be fully reusable, boasting a super heavy booster that produces remarkable thrust. During its third launch test, the Starship met several objectives, including testing its payload delivery capabilities and atmospheric re-entry. 

After the launch, the Starship zoomed through space at a speed of 26,000 km per hour, reaching an altitude of over 200 km above sea level. It made its journey halfway around the Earth before beginning its descent over the Indian Ocean. 

However, 49 minutes into the flight, ground control lost all signals of the spacecraft, leading to the declaration that the vessel was “lost,” likely destroyed before it could have a planned hard splashdown. The lower-stage booster also failed to achieve a successful water landing.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk remains optimistic about the Starship’s potential. “Starship will make life multiplanetary,” he wrote on X. 

Starship will make life multiplanetary pic.twitter.com/Ul7ksiAHBZ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2024

SpaceX’s first integrated test ended abruptly in April 2023, when the Starship failed to separate its stages, resulting in the rocket being destroyed over the Gulf of Mexico. A second test in November of the same year showed slight improvement but ended in an explosion over the ocean. 

Each Starship costs SpaceX around $90 million to build. Despite setbacks, SpaceX’s testing approach in the real world has been successful in the past with Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules. With NASA planning a Moon mission in 2026 and China aiming for 2030, SpaceX must demonstrate Starship’s capabilities, including safe flight and refuelling in orbit, to stay competitive.

SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket lifts off on its third launch from the company’s Boca Chica launchpad on an uncrewed test flight, near Brownsville, Texas, U.S. March 14, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

SpaceX’s Starship rocket, designed to eventually send astronauts to the moon and beyond, completed nearly an entire test flight through space on its third try on Thursday, getting farther than ever before, but disintegrated on its return to Earth.

During a webcast of the flight, SpaceX commentators said mission control lost communication with Starship from two satellite systems simultaneously while the spacecraft was re-entering the planet’s atmosphere at hypersonic speed.

The spacecraft at that point was nearing a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean, about an hour after launch from south Texas.

Contact with Starship cut out moments after a live video feed from a camera mounted on the vehicle showed high-definition images of a reddish glow enveloping the silvery spacecraft from the heat of re-entry friction as it plunged earthward.

A few minutes later, SpaceX confirmed that the spacecraft had been “lost” – meaning incinerated or broken apart – during the stress of re-entry.

For reasons that were left unclear, SpaceX opted to skip one of the test flight’s core objectives – an attempt to re-ignite one of Starship’s Raptor engines while it coasted in a shallow orbit. That milestone is considered key to its future success.

Still, completion of many of Starship’s intended flight objectives represented progress in the development of a spacecraft crucial to the growing satellite launch business of SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, and NASA’s moon program.

NASA chief Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on what he called “a successful test flight” in a statement posted on social media platform X. The U.S. space agency is SpaceX’s biggest customer.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell wrote in an X post that the test marked an “incredible day.”

The two-stage spacecraft, consisting of the Starship cruise vessel mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, blasted off from the company’s Starbase launch site near Boca Chica Village on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The upper-stage Starship reached peak altitudes of 145 miles (234 km).

The spacecraft far exceeded its two past performances, both of which were cut short by explosions minutes after launch. The company had acknowledged in advance a high probability that its latest flight might similarly end with the spacecraft’s demise before the mission profile was finished.

Engineering goals

Thursday’s flight achieved many of the engineering goals set for the mission: a repeat of successful stage separation during initial ascent; the first test of Starship’s ability to open and close its payload door in orbit; and the transfer of super-cooled rocket propellant from one tank to another during spaceflight.

What SpaceX failed to demonstrate on top of Starship’s re-entry failure and the skipped engine re-ignition test was an attempt to fly the Super Heavy rocket back to Earth, part of SpaceX’s routine strategy of recovering its launch boosters for re-use.

SpaceX officials have said they plan to conduct at least six more test flights of Starship this year, subject to regulatory approval.

The company is required to investigate each test mission failure and deliver its findings and corrective actions to the Federal Aviation Administration for the agency’s approval before the vehicle can fly again.

On the whole, Thursday’s test encompassed a fraction of the remaining demonstrations and missions the vehicle must get through before it is proven safe enough to fly people to space.

Still, 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.

Closer to home, Musk also sees Starship as eventually replacing the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as the workhorse in the company’s commercial launch business. It already lofts most of the world’s satellites and other payloads to low-Earth orbit.

NASA also has a lot riding on the success of Starship, which the agency is giving a central role in its Artemis program, successor to the Apollo missions that put astronauts on the moon for the first time more than 50 years ago.

While NASA executives have embraced Musk’s frequent flight-testing approach, agency officials in recent months have made clear their desire to see greater progress with Starship’s development as the United States races with China to the lunar surface.