SpaceX’s Starship launches as seen from South Padre Island near Brownsville, Texas, U.S., on Tuesday (November 19, 2024).
| Photo Credit: Reuters

SpaceX on Tuesday (November 19, 2024) launched another Starship rocket but passed up catching the booster with giant mechanical arms.

Unlike last month’s success, the booster was directed to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The catch was called off just four minutes into the test flight from Texas for unspecified reasons, and the booster hit the water three minutes later.

Not all of the criteria for a booster catch was met and so the flight director did not command the booster to return to the launch site, said SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot. He did not specify what went wrong.

At the same time, the empty spacecraft launched from Texas atop Starship soared across the Gulf of Mexico on a near loop around the world similar to October’s test flight. Skimming space, the shiny retro-looking craft targeted the Indian Ocean for a controlled but destructive end to the hourlong demo.

It was the latest test for the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket that SpaceX and NASA hope to use to get astronauts back on the moon and eventually Mars.

SpaceX kept the same flight path as last time, but changed some steps along the way as well as the time of day. Starship blasted off in late afternoon instead of early morning to ensure daylight halfway around the world for observing the spacecraft’s descent.

Among the new objectives — igniting one of the spacecraft’s engines in space, which would be necessary when returning from orbit. There were also thermal protection experiments aboard the spacecraft, with some areas stripped of heat tiles to see whether catch mechanisms might work there on future flights. Even more upgrades are planned for the next test flight.

President-elect Donald Trump flew in for the launch in the latest sign of a deepening bond between him and Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO.

SpaceX wants to eventually return and reuse the entire 400-foot Starship. Full-scale recycling would drive down the cost of hauling cargo and people to the moon and Mars, while speeding things up. The recycling of SpaceX’s Falcon rockets flying out of Florida and California has already saved the company time and money.

NASA is paying SpaceX more than $4 billion to land astronauts on the moon via Starship on back-to-back missions later this decade. Musk envisions launching a fleet of Starships to build a city one day on Mars.

This was the sixth launch of a fully assembled Starship since 2023. The first three ended up in explosions.

SpaceX’s Starship launches as seen from South Padre Island near Brownsville, Texas, U.S., on Tuesday (November 19, 2024).
| Photo Credit: Reuters

SpaceX on Tuesday (November 19, 2024) launched another Starship rocket but passed up catching the booster with giant mechanical arms.

Unlike last month’s success, the booster was directed to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The catch was called off just four minutes into the test flight from Texas for unspecified reasons, and the booster hit the water three minutes later.

Not all of the criteria for a booster catch was met and so the flight director did not command the booster to return to the launch site, said SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot. He did not specify what went wrong.

At the same time, the empty spacecraft launched from Texas atop Starship soared across the Gulf of Mexico on a near loop around the world similar to October’s test flight. Skimming space, the shiny retro-looking craft targeted the Indian Ocean for a controlled but destructive end to the hourlong demo.

It was the latest test for the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket that SpaceX and NASA hope to use to get astronauts back on the moon and eventually Mars.

SpaceX kept the same flight path as last time, but changed some steps along the way as well as the time of day. Starship blasted off in late afternoon instead of early morning to ensure daylight halfway around the world for observing the spacecraft’s descent.

Among the new objectives — igniting one of the spacecraft’s engines in space, which would be necessary when returning from orbit. There were also thermal protection experiments aboard the spacecraft, with some areas stripped of heat tiles to see whether catch mechanisms might work there on future flights. Even more upgrades are planned for the next test flight.

President-elect Donald Trump flew in for the launch in the latest sign of a deepening bond between him and Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO.

SpaceX wants to eventually return and reuse the entire 400-foot Starship. Full-scale recycling would drive down the cost of hauling cargo and people to the moon and Mars, while speeding things up. The recycling of SpaceX’s Falcon rockets flying out of Florida and California has already saved the company time and money.

NASA is paying SpaceX more than $4 billion to land astronauts on the moon via Starship on back-to-back missions later this decade. Musk envisions launching a fleet of Starships to build a city one day on Mars.

This was the sixth launch of a fully assembled Starship since 2023. The first three ended up in explosions.

After Donald Trump was re-elected as the US President, billionaire Elon Musk, who is now set to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with Vivek Ramaswamy, announced that SpaceX’s ambitious “Earth-to-Earth” space travel project would soon come to reality.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which was first proposed almost ten years ago and is said to be the most powerful in the world, would enable intercontinental travel at previously unprecedented speeds.

According to a report by the Daily Mail, the Starship could transport up to 1,000 passengers per trip, flying in orbit parallel to Earth’s surface rather than venturing into deep space. Projected travel times are groundbreaking: Los Angeles to Toronto in 24 minutes, London to New York in 29 minutes, Delhi to San Francisco in 30 minutes, and New York to Shanghai in 39 minutes.

The concept has recently gained momentum on social media, with user @ajtourville sharing a promotional video of the project on X (formerly Twitter).

Under Trump’s FAA, @SpaceX could even get Starship Earth to Earth approved in a few years — Taking people from any city to any other city on Earth in under one hour. pic.twitter.com/vgYAzg8oaB

— ALEX (@ajtourville) November 6, 2024

The post speculated that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) might greenlight the initiative under a potential second Trump administration.

Elon Musk reacted to this post and wrote, “This is now possible.”

As public interest grows, Musk’s vision of ultra-fast travel could redefine global connectivity, making it possible to cross continents in minutes.

SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship lifts off from Starbase for a test flight on Sunday (October 13, 2024), in Boca Chica, Texas
| Photo Credit: AP

SpaceX launched its enormous Starship rocket on Sunday (October 13, 2024) on its boldest test flight yet, catching the returning booster back at the pad with mechanical arms.

Towering almost 400 feet (121 meters), the empty Starship blasted off at sunrise from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. It arced over the Gulf of Mexico like the four Starships before it that ended up being destroyed, either soon after liftoff or while ditching into the sea. The last one in June was the most successful yet, completing its flight without exploding.

This time, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk upped the challenge and risk. The company brought the first-stage booster back to land at the pad from which it had soared seven minutes earlier. The launch tower sported monstrous metal arms, dubbed chopsticks, that caught the descending 232-foot (71-meter) booster.

“Are you kidding me?” SpaceX’s Dan Huot observed with excitement from near the launch site. “I am shaking right now.”

“This is a day for the engineering history books,” added SpaceX’s Kate Tice from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

It was up to the flight director to decide, in real time with a manual control, whether to attempt the landing. SpaceX said both the booster and launch tower had to be in good, stable condition. Otherwise, it was going to end up in the gulf like the previous ones. Everything was judged to be ready for the catch.

Once free of the booster, the retro-looking stainless steel spacecraft on top continued around the world, targeting a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The June flight came up short at the end after pieces came off. SpaceX upgraded the software and reworked the heat shield, improving the thermal tiles.

SpaceX has been recovering the first-stage boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets for nine years, after delivering satellites and crews to orbit from Florida or California. But they land on floating ocean platforms or on concrete slabs several miles from their launch pads — not on them.

Recycling Falcon boosters has sped up the launch rate and saved SpaceX millions. Musk intends to do the same for Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built with 33 methane-fuel engines on the booster alone. NASA has ordered two Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. SpaceX intends to use Starship to send people and supplies to the moon and, eventually Mars.

Boca China:

Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket, flew further and faster than ever before during its third test flight Thursday, although it was eventually lost as it re-entered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, SpaceX said.

Lift-off from the company’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas came around 8:25 am local time (1325 GMT) and was carried live on a webcast that was watched by millions on social media platform X.

The sleek mega rocket is vital to NASA’s plans for landing astronauts on the Moon later this decade — and Elon Musk’s hopes of colonizing Mars someday.

“Congrats to @SpaceX on a successful test flight!” tweeted NASA administrator Bill Nelson following the test.

All eyes were on Thursday’s launch after two prior attempts ended in spectacular explosions. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing: The company has adopted a rapid trial-and-error approach to accelerate development, and the strategy has brought it numerous successes in the past.

– Objectives met –

When the two stages of Starship are combined, the rocket stands 397 feet (121 meters) tall — beating the Statue of Liberty by a comfortable 90 feet.

Its Super Heavy Booster produces 16.7 million pounds (74.3 Meganewtons) of thrust, almost double that of the world’s second most powerful rocket, NASA’s Space Launch System — though the latter is now certified, while Starship is still a prototype.

Starship’s third launch test in its fully stacked configuration was its most ambitious yet and the company said it was able to meet many of its objectives.

These included opening and closing Starship’s payload door to test its ability to deliver satellites into orbit.

High definition footage from an onboard camera showed Starship coasting in space, with the curve of the Earth visible in the background. It hit a top speed of more than 26,000 kilometers per hour (16,000 mph) and achieved an altitude of more than 200 kilometers above sea level.

Starship flew halfway around the globe, then began its descent over the Indian Ocean, with engineers cheering as its heat shield composed of 18,000 hexagonal tiles glowed red hot.

But ground control stopped receiving signals and announcers declared the vessel “lost” before it could achieve its final goal of splashing down. The lower-stage booster also failed to make a successful water landing, and as a result, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was opening a “mishap” investigation.

“Starship will make life multiplanetary,” Musk, the company’s billionaire founder, posted on X afterward, emphasizing the progress made.

– Real world testing –

The first so-called “integrated” test came in April 2023. SpaceX was forced to blow up Starship within a few minutes of launch, because the two stages failed to separate.

The rocket disintegrated into a ball of fire and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, sending a dust cloud over a town several miles (kilometers) away.

The second test in November 2023 fared slightly better: The booster separated from the spaceship, but both then exploded over the ocean, in what the company euphemistically called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

It currently costs SpaceX around $90 million to build each Starship, according to a report by the research company Payload published in January.

SpaceX’s strategy of carrying out tests in the real world rather than in labs has paid off in the past.

Its Falcon 9 rockets have come to be workhorses for NASA and the commercial sector, its Dragon capsule sends astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, and its Starlink internet satellite constellation now covers dozens of countries.

But the clock is ticking for SpaceX to be ready for NASA’s planned return of astronauts to the Moon in 2026, using a modified Starship as the lander vehicle.

China is approaching in the rear view mirror, targeting 2030 to land its first crew on the Moon.

Not only does SpaceX need to prove it can launch, fly and land Starship safely — it must eventually also show it can send multiple “Starship tankers” into orbit to refuel, at supercooled temperatures, a main Starship for its onward journey to the Moon.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)