Elon Musk‘s SpaceX on Thursday successfully completed the fourth flight test of its Starship launch vehicle, checking all its test flight goals, and the CEO is already outlining future launch objectives.
What Happened: The vehicle lifted off at 7:50 a.m. CT from Starbase in Texas on Thursday. The two stages of the vehicle- the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster- separated and the booster subsequently had a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The spacecraft ignited its own engines and went on to space, made a controlled re-entry to Earth, and had a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The entire flight lasted one hour and six minutes from launch.
The key objective of this test flight was to re-enter Earth. The mission achieved it but lost many hexagonal heat-shield tiles designed to protect against the extreme heat of reentry to Earth’s atmosphere in the process.
“Despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!” Musk wrote on social media platform X afterward.
“A fully and immediately reusable orbital heat shield, which (as you know) has never been made before, is the single toughest problem remaining,” he ...