Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
SpaceX launched the first test flight of its Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster on Friday, with many positive results.
The powerful rocket, powered by 33 large methane-fueled engines, lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in South Texas at 5:30 pm CDT (6:30 pm EDT; 22:30 UTC) on Friday. Within minutes, the 124-meter-tall rocket, the largest ever built, lifted off the launch pad and headed east toward the Gulf of Mexico.
The asteroid hit its target in the Indian Ocean just over an hour before completing the maiden flight of SpaceX’s latest version of the stainless steel mega-rocket. Starship V3 did better in the beginning than the first flights of Starship V1 and V2 in 2023 and 2025. The previous two Starship models broke up on their initial flights.
SpaceX officials seemed pleased with the performance of Starship V3 on Friday. Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of the company, praised his engineers with a post on X: “Congratulations to the SpaceX team for the launch and first landing of Starship V3! You have scored a goal for the people.”
“Thank you and a big thank you to the SpaceX team for always giving,” Gwynne Shotwell, vice president of SpaceX, wrote in the X post. “This was an amazing debut for a new vehicle. Our future interstellar flight is very close.”
Leaders at NASA, are counting on SpaceX to deliver the Starship as a rated by a human Moon landerhe was eagerly watching the opening. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was in Texas to see for himself. He praised SpaceX for the “hell of launching the V3 Starship.”
Starship’s 12th test flight was a a long time to come. The final test flight of the Starship it started last October. The seven-month gap was the longest time between Starship flights since the project was fully launched in April 2023. SpaceX used the time to complete construction and relaunch the second control system at Starbase while engineers piloted Starship V3 through ground testing. he had his own obstacles.
