SpaceX Successfully Launches Unmanned Starship Craft

June 6, 2024 Science, Technology

The New York Times reports:

Starship, the gargantuan rocket under development by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, launched on Thursday morning to make a fourth attempt to get to space and back.

The previous three flights of the vehicle all ended in explosions, but each got farther than the last. Such progress is regarded as success in SpaceX’s break-it-then-fix-it approach to engineering and has been celebrated by some of the company’s fans.

Those include Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, whose agency is depending on Starship to land astronauts on the moon.

Read the full article.

Now targeting 7:50 a.m. CT for launch of Starship’s fourth flight test. Weather conditions are 95% favorable. The webcast will go live ~30 minutes ahead of liftoff → https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK pic.twitter.com/Qf8bnsvysd

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 6, 2024

Liftoff of Starship! pic.twitter.com/2Z1PdNPYPG

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 6, 2024

If Starship manages to make it all the way to reentry, we’ll collect valuable data on the vehicle at hypersonic speeds, or more than 5x the speed of sound pic.twitter.com/37o5SPdy9p

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 6, 2024

Super Heavy has splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico pic.twitter.com/hIY3Gkq57k

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 6, 2024