Elon Musk’s Starship megarocket reached orbit for the first time on Monday after blasting off from Texas, in a major milestone for SpaceX’s future plans, including trips to the Moon and Mars.
The black-and-silver behemoth, standing more than 120 meters (131 yards) tall, rose through a thick cloud of smoke on an ambitious 14th test flight.
The upper stage separated from the Super Heavy booster and reached orbit about 26 minutes into flight.
Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP
During the test, expected to last about 10 hours, the experimental rocket’s upper stage is set to orbit Earth several times and deploy 26 next-generation Starlink satellites.
As a precaution, the spacecraft was launched on a suborbital trajectory and — after some back-and-forth — the launch team decided to perform a second burn to reach orbit.
“Starship is orbital,” announced one member of the launch team, as cheers rang out.
Satellite deployment began minutes later.
Previous Starship tests, all conducted on safer, less demanding suborbital trajectories, had ended in spectacular explosions, including over the Caribbean.
