Elon Musk’s Monster Rocket Just Took Its Biggest Leap Yet

Drew Berkemeyer

1 month ago

Elon Musk’s Monster Rocket Just Took Its Biggest Leap Yet

<&excl;-- BEGIN THEIA POST SLIDER -->&NewLine; &NewLine;&NewLine;<div style="position&colon;relative" data-narration-container="true">&NewLine;SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket reached orbit for the first time on Monday, clearing a major milestone for Elon Musk’s company despite an engine shutting down unexpectedly during the unmanned test flight&period;&NewLine;The 14th Starship test flight lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas Monday morning, with the rocket reaching orbit roughly 26 minutes after launch&period; SpaceX also successfully deployed all 26 of the new Starlink V3 satellites carried aboard the spacecraft&period;&NewLine;&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Starship is orbital,” Mission Control announced as SpaceX employees cheered the achievement&period;&NewLine;The milestone came after a tense moment early in the flight&period; One of Starship’s six engines shut down unexpectedly during its ascent, prompting flight controllers to review whether the spacecraft could safely continue with its planned orbital insertion burn&period;&NewLine;Engineers determined that the remaining engines were healthy and that the affected engine was not required for the remainder of the mission&period; The team gave the spacecraft a &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;go” to continue&period; Starship subsequently completed its orbital burn using a single Raptor engine, successfully placing the spacecraft into orbit&period;&NewLine;The achievement marks a significant change from Starship’s previous 13 test flights, which were flown on suborbital trajectories rather than attempting to place the spacecraft into orbit&period;&NewLine;The spacecraft was initially scheduled to remain in space for roughly 10 hours and complete six orbits before a controlled splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile&period; SpaceX later said the spacecraft would return earlier than originally planned, reducing the number of orbits it would complete&period;&NewLine;The 26 Starlink V3 satellites were successfully deployed during the mission&period; The satellites represent the first operational Starlink payload launched aboard Starship and are designed to provide substantially greater capacity than previous generations&period;&NewLine;SpaceX has <a href="https&colon;//www&period;cnbc&period;com/2026/09/28/spacex-prepares-to-send-starship-rocket-to-orbit-for-first-time&period;html" target="&lowbar;blank" rel="noopener">said</a> a single Starship could eventually carry as many as 60 Starlink V3 satellites, compared with the roughly 20-times-smaller capacity of a Falcon 9 launch&period;&NewLine;The achievement is particularly important for SpaceX’s broader Starlink ambitions&period; The company operates thousands of satellites in orbit and is developing Starship as a much larger and more capable platform for expanding the constellation&period;&NewLine;Starship is designed as a fully reusable two-stage rocket, with SpaceX aiming to eventually use the vehicle to carry large amounts of cargo and people into space at lower costs than previous launch systems&period;&NewLine;The company also has much bigger plans for the vehicle&period; NASA is preparing to use a future version of Starship as a lunar lander for its Artemis program, while SpaceX ultimately envisions using the spacecraft for human missions to Mars&period; SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell has also said the company plans to use Starship for space-based computing, including launching artificial-intelligence computing satellites&period;&NewLine;For now, Monday’s flight represents a major step toward those ambitions&period;&NewLine;The next challenge is proving that the massive spacecraft can repeatedly perform the feat — and eventually return safely enough to be reused in future missions&period;&NewLine;</div>&NewLine; &NewLine; <a href="https&colon;//www&period;dailywire&period;com/news/elon-musks-monster-rocket-just-took-its-biggest-leap-yet">Source link </a>&NewLine;<&excl;-- END THEIA POST SLIDER -->&NewLine;