SPACEX LAUNCHES STARSHIP TOWARD ORBIT FOR FIRST TIME

SpaceX launched its Starship rocket toward orbit for the first time on Monday, aiming to complete six laps around Earth in a flight the company said would help prove the vehicle's readiness for NASA's Artemis moon programme. Founder Elon Musk's rocket, described by SpaceX as the biggest and most powerful ever built, carried 26 Starlink satellites intended to join roughly 11,000 already in service. It was the 14th full-scale test flight of Starship from SpaceX's Starbase site in southern Texas in three years. SpaceX said the flight needed a "go" call confirming all systems were working properly before it could proceed to orbit, with a "no-go" decision set to bring it to an early end over the Indian Ocean. The mission aimed to reach an altitude of about 170 miles (275 kilometres) and circle the globe six times over almost ten hours, before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near Chile.

Previous Starship test flights had travelled no further than the Indian Ocean, often crashing, according to SpaceX. This time, the first-stage booster was not intended to return to the Starbase launch site, instead dropping into the Gulf of Mexico shortly after lift-off, with SpaceX saying it wanted to confirm reliability before flying the booster back. Musk told a business summit earlier this month that SpaceX was "being extremely cautious", saying that if the spacecraft broke apart over land and rained debris on people, "our popularity would diminish very rapidly." Standing 407 feet (124 metres) tall, Starship was designed from the outset to be fully reusable, which SpaceX says is key to lowering launch costs. The company recovered its previous Starship from the Indian Ocean in July and said engineers had modified the latest vehicle's heat shield based on inspections of that recovered spacecraft, which is being returned to Starbase.

SpaceX said that if Monday's flight succeeds, the next Starship launch will attempt to return to the pad, where mechanical arms would catch the descending spacecraft. Musk said he rated the chances of a successful catch as even or slightly better. SpaceX said that if the catch works, it plans to reuse the spacecraft by the end of the year or in early the following year. The company described the mission as part of a wider effort to certify Starship for orbital flight, which it says is required before the vehicle can be used for missions to the Moon and Mars.