Elon Musk’s Starship launched from Texas: flight over Earth is normal

The launch program includes a test of the payload hatch

The most powerful starship made of steel, Starship, for delivering passengers and cargo, set off on March 14 for its third test flight. It launched at 16:20 Moscow time into low-Earth orbit using a Super Heavy launch vehicle from the Starbase spaceport in Texas.

This flight, unlike the first two, which SpaceX launched in 2023, will follow a new trajectory: instead of the Pacific Starship, it will fall into the Indian Ocean. This new trajectory will allow new technologies such as igniting engines to be tested in space. The third orbital flight also plans to include tests of the payload hatch and a demonstration of internal fuel transfer and in-space restart of the Raptor engine.

Let us recall that Starship is a ship that, like Noah’s Ark, will be able to load on board a lot of (compared to current ships) representatives of humanity – 100 cosmonauts at once. True, unlike Noah, Musk is not going to stop on one flight; he intends to organize shuttle flights along the route Earth – Mars and back.

At the time of writing, the ship flew for about half an hour at an altitude of about 200 km above the Earth. At about 5 p.m. Moscow time, the spacecraft is expected to deorbit and splash down in the ocean.