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SpaceXis proceed to make advance on the evolution of Starship , the magnanimous rocket engine ever built , with the third test flight Thursday accomplishing considerably more than the previous two tests .
The 400 - ft - tall Starship rocket come up off from SpaceX ’s Starbase readiness in southeastern Texas at 8:25 a.m. local time . Although SpaceX has been developing Starship for years , this is only the third time the society has try an orbital delegacy .
After liftoff , Starship proceed through a nominative — aerospace talk for normal — ascend . All 33 Raptor engine on the Super Heavy booster perform as designed , and the two stages separated around 2 minute 45 seconds into the mission . Critically , the launch fomite pick up a novel stage separation technique call “ hot staging , ” where the upper phase ( also bid Starship ) lights its engine to campaign away the Super Heavy protagonist . The hot - theatrical production proficiency was perform for the first time , ever , during the second Starship examination escape last November .
From there , the Starship upper leg continued its climb to orbit . SpaceX CEO Elon Musk congratulated the squad on X , saying , “ spaceship reached orbital velocity ! ”
spaceship reach orbital velocity !
Congratulations@SpaceXteam ! !
— Elon Musk ( @elonmusk)March 14 , 2024
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The booster executed what ’s called a boostback burn to adapt its flight as it take to splatter down in the Gulf of Mexico — Falcon 9 ’s booster performs the same maneuver to vertically land back on Earth — but its locomotive engine failed to relight for the landing burn phase . The Super Heavy was after lost .
The company nailed another new milepost after it opened Starship ’s payload threshold for the first time . This capability is essential for SpaceX ’s design to chop-chop deploy many hundreds of next - generation Starlink planet . Another demonstration , a propellant transfer demo , was also completed , though the company did not go into the results of this test .
Propellant transfer is a crucial part of the company ’s plans to generate homo to the synodic month for NASA . As part of SpaceX ’s plans for that NASA mission , the company has settled on a missionary post computer architecture that could include more than a dozen spaceship refueling trips .
Being able to refuel the vehicle is also necessary for a future Mars mission .
Starship go along on its coast phase , but after around a one-half hour the company pronounce it would n’t attempt to relight the engines to proceed with the trial . SpaceX did n’t elaborate on the livestream why it decided not to continue .
Instead , they let gravity do its piece of work , and the Earth ’s powerful gravitational forces pulled Starship back through the lower atmosphere . Ultimately , commission controllers break down to restore communications with Starship , leadingSpaceX ’s Dan Huot to announce that they had lost the ship : “ No splashdown today , but again just it ’s incredible to see how much further we got this fourth dimension around , ” he said .
