SpaceX sucessfully launches Starship in third flight test

SpaceX’s massive Starship took off from the company’s Starbase launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, at 9:25AM ET on Thursday morning. Unlike its two predecessors, it has stayed in one piece and is continuing to fly on its way to a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

So far, it has completed the hot-staging separation from its Super Heavy booster and opened a payload door intended to demonstrate how it could be used for missions like delivering Starlink satellites into orbit. The latest update from SpaceX says that the vehicle has entered a “coast phase” before it attempts a planned in-space relight of the Raptor engines at about 40 minutes into the flight.

This was SpaceX’s third attempt to test the Starship rocket, with the first on April 20th of last year bursting into flames around four minutes after launch. Its second attempt on November 18th fared better — while the Super Heavy booster also exploded after separation, the Starship spacecraft continued its journey into orbit, where SpaceX believes it self-destructed after contact with the vehicle was lost.

Today’s Starship test was given the green light by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday, less than 24 hours before its scheduled launch time, having determined that SpaceX had “met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements.” According to Space.com, the FAA had required SpaceX to complete 17 corrective actions concerning things like vehicle hardware redesigns, flammability analysis updates, and the installation of additional fire protection following an investigation into the second failed Starship test — far fewer than the 63 corrective actions identified during the first test.

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