SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket blasted off from Texas Monday morning on its most ambitious test flight yet, beginning a roughly 10-hour mission aimed at sending the spacecraft around Earth six times.
Minutes into the uncrewed spacecraft’s ascent, the rocket lost one of its engines, throwing into question whether the test flight would abandon its goal of reaching orbit for the first time. After several tense minutes, flight controllers decided the spacecraft was “go” for orbit and continued with the mission.
Starship successfully completed an orbital burn with just a single Raptor engine to reach the Earth’s orbit about 26 minutes after liftoff.
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“Starship is orbital,” Mission Control announced as people cheered the milestone.
The launch marks Starship’s 14th test flight and its first attempt to reach orbit, a major step beyond previous suborbital missions that ended with splashdowns about an hour after liftoff.
The spacecraft is also expected to deploy 26 Starlink satellites before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile.
All Starship flights so far have been uncrewed, but NASA is looking to use a future version of the spacecraft as a lunar lander for astronauts.
The longer-term goal is even more ambitious: a large fleet of Starships capable of carrying humans to Mars.
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This is a developing news story; check back for updates.
