🌌 Starship finally flies to outer space

It’s been another busy week for the space industry.

Starship flew to space for the very first time this week. The rocket was designed to usher in a new era of reusable spaceflight, and it just reached orbital velocity and flew around Earth for the very first time.

Not only that, the massive Mars rocket’s Starlink internet connection held steady even as Starship was reentering Earth’s atmosphere. It allowed SpaceX to livestream some incredible footage.

SpaceX and Elon Musk have galvanized a whole host of other companies. But reaching orbit for the first time is never easy. More on that below.

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AEROSPACE ENGINEERING SPOTLIGHT

SpaceX’s Starship launch system took off for the third time on Thursday, March 14.

This time, it soared to the suborbital trajectory SpaceX had planned and performed several impressive milestones along the way.

A few minutes after launch, Starship performed its second-ever hot-staging separation. A hot-staging separation sees the rocket’s upper stage start firing its engines moments before separation.

A vented interstage allows the rocket exhaust to exit the launch system without harming the vehicle. This allows the upper stage to gain enough momentum to successfully soar toward orbit.

Roughly half an hour after the launch of Starship, SpaceX opened the rocket’s payload door and then closed it once again. This tested the method SpaceX will eventually use to deploy Starlink satellites and other payloads with Starship.

SpaceX had also intended to perform the first-ever re-light of a Raptor engine during IFT-3. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible and SpaceX lost contact with Starship shortly after reentry started. Still, SpaceX successfully completed the majority of its goals for this mission.

What’s more, the Starlink connection held impressively well as Starship was surrounded by plasma during that reentry phase. It allowed SpaceX to stream stunning footage of the fiery reentry. This is especially impressive considering the rocket was traveling at approximately 27,000 km/h.

The successful launch ushers in a new era of spaceflight. Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket, was designed to be fully reusable. By reusing every part of the rocket, SpaceX will drive down the cost of successive launches, making human spaceflight to Mars possible.

Last week we asked “What do you prefer to read about?” here are the results

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ New rocket designs? (19%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 New aerospace engine designs? (34%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ New sustainable space technologies? (26%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Spacecraft built to explore the solar system? (21%)

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AERO BULLETIN

Tokyo-based rocket startup Space One faced a fiery setback this week as its rocket blew up only seconds into its first launch. Here is a rundown of a few recent first launches for rocket startups around the world.

SpaceOne

Tokyo’s Space One launched its Kairos rocket for the first time on March 13. Unfortunately, the rocket exploded just 50 seconds into the launch. The rocket was carrying a government satellite. Space One announced it manually terminated the rocket and is now investigating.

Relativity Space

Relativity Space’s 3D-printed Terran-1 rocket failed to reach orbit on its first and only attempt in March last year. However, the California-based company felt it collected enough data to discontinue the rocket and fully focus on the development of its next rocket, the Terran-R.

PLD Space

PLD Space launched Europe’s first private rocket on October 7 last year. The suborbital Miura 1 rocket launched from Spain’s southern coast. The successful launch could be seen as a turning point for the European launch sector, which has lagged behind the US and China.

Space Pioneer

Chinese startup Space Pioneer made history in April last year by becoming the first private space company to reach orbit on its first attempt. The company’s Tianlong-2 rocket lifted a small satellite to a Sun-synchronous orbit in the process.