SpaceX · South Korea · India · Ars Technica
SpaceX's Starship V3—still a work in progress—mostly successful on first flight
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SpaceX launched the first test flight of its upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster Friday, with mostly positive results.
Key facts
- The powerful rocket, propelled by 33 methane-fueled main engines, climbed away from SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in South Texas at 5:30 pm CDT (6:30 pm EDT; 22:30 UTC) Friday
- Collectively, the 33 Raptor engines on the booster produced up to 18 million pounds of thrust at full throttle, twice the power of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket used on last month’s Artemis II
- All of this worked perfectly as the ship soared to a maximum altitude of 121 miles (195 kilometers) in darkness over the South Atlantic Ocean
- Starship V3 fared better on its debut than the first flights of Starship V1 and V2 in 2023 and 2025
Summary
The powerful rocket, propelled by 33 methane-fueled main engines, climbed away from SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in South Texas at 5:30 pm CDT (6:30 pm EDT; 22:30 UTC) Friday. Starship splashed down on target in the Indian Ocean a little more than an hour later to conclude the first flight of the latest version of SpaceX’s stainless steel mega-rocket. SpaceX officials appeared pleased with the performance of Starship V3 on Friday. “Congrats and a huge thank you to the SpaceX team that always delivers,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s second in command, wrote in an X post.