Starship reaches orbit for the first time

It looks like Nicki Minaj was onto something: Starships are meant to fly.

SpaceX launched its Starship rocket on a nearly three-hour test flight yesterday, marking the first time the world’s most powerful rocket reached Earth’s orbit after a series of suborbital test flights.

Reaching for the stars

Starship completed nearly two laps around Earth during the mission and deployed 26 next-gen Starlink v3 satellites, marking the first operational payload carried by the rocket into orbit.

• The mission represents a step up from previous Starship tests, which typically lasted just over an hour.
• But yesterday’s test was cut short by ~7 hours—eliminating four additional planned laps around Earth—after one of Starship’s engines shut down prematurely, eventually ending with a controlled splashdown off the coast of Chile.

The “holy grail” of rocketry: SpaceX’s ultimate goal is to make Starship fully and rapidly reusable, with both stages of the rocket eventually returning to the launch site to be caught by giant mechanical arms and be made ready to fly again.

SpaceX says full reusability could dramatically reduce the cost of getting cargo and humans into orbit, with the long-term goal of making spaceflight operate more like air travel.

• One Starship rocket can carry 60 Starlink v3 satellites into orbit, representing ~20 times the capacity of SpaceX’s earlier Falcon 9 rockets, according to the company.

Looking ahead…Starship is slated to play a major role in NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon’s surface in 2028.