SpaceX’s Starship megarocket blasted off from Texas on Friday afternoon as the aerospace company sought to make history with a double catch of its reusable rocket.
Starship, the world’s largest rocket, standing at ۴۰۷ft, is expected to orbit Earth about ۱۴ times over the course of ۲۲ hours, before the company catches the rocket at its launchpad at Starbase in south Texas.
The rocket, which is on its ۱۵th flight, is composed of two elements: the lower booster, with ۳۳ raptor engines that fired off during takeoff, and the Starship at the top.
SpaceX had planned for both components to return to its tower, but the booster, named Super Heavy, was aborted, and splashed down in the sea. The cause of that diversion remains unknown.
The Starship, meanwhile, continued on sailing through space.
Friday’s test fell short of the double-catch mantle, but the flight is poised to mark another milestone for the company. If all goes to plan, it would be the first time SpaceX has caught the rocket’s ۱۷۱ft upper stage.
Previous tests focused on the retrieval of the booster.
SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk has sought to advance Starship’s “rapid reusability”, which he hopes will take humans to the moon and, controversially, to Mars.
Nasa has contracted Space X, along with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, to provide the lunar landers that will return astronauts to the moon in ۲۰۲۸.
SpaceX has launched a flurry of test flights, in recent years, some of which have resulted in explosions that signaled major design flaws.
In September, the most recent flight test, SpaceX notched a victory, sending the spacecraft into Earth’s orbit for the first time, although its engine failed during the ascent.
