The ambitious projects of the aerospace company SpaceX are making progress: in a current test, the engines of the Starship rocket withstand. An important step on the way to the first orbital flight has thus been taken. That could happen very soon now.
The private US aerospace company SpaceX has taken an important step on the way to the first orbital flight of the world’s largest rocket: According to the company, almost all engines of the first stage of its Starship rocket were successfully ignited during a test on Thursday. The first orbital flight could now follow in March. Although the SpaceX team had to shut down one engine shortly before the test and another shut down automatically, 31 engines fired, explained SpaceX founder Elon Musk. “That’s enough to reach orbit”.
As the engines burned for seconds, the Starship rocket’s first stage was engulfed in huge plumes of orange flame and smoke. The 69 meter high Booster Super Heavy was firmly fixed to the ground to prevent it from taking off. According to SpaceX, the test at the Texas site took just as long as planned.
In addition to its first stage, the most powerful rocket in space history to date consists of the reusable spacecraft, which has already completed several test flights – some of which ended with impressive explosions.
Musk announced in February that if all further tests were successful, the first Starship rocket could take off for the first time in March. The US space agency NASA is currently planning to use Starship as a landing module as part of its Artemis program in 2025 at the earliest. Starship is significantly larger and more powerful than NASA’s SLS rocket, which the space agency plans to use to launch astronauts into orbit around the moon from 2024.
