Test flight comes after explosive failures raised doubts over founder Elon Musk’s goals to reach Mars and moon
Third time was the charm on Tuesday for the launch of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket after the launch had been scrubbed two times in as many days.
The stainless steel behemoth, 403ft (123 meters) tall, lifted off from the company’s Starbase in southern Texas at 6.30pm local time (2330 GMT), to loud cheers from engineering teams, a webcast showed.
The 10th test flight comes after a string of explosive failures that raised doubts about whether the world’s most powerful launch vehicle can fulfill founder Elon Musk’s vision of colonizing Mars or helping Nasa return astronauts to the moon.
SpaceX will not attempt to catch the booster from Tuesday’s flight because the component would instead be used for in-flight experiments “to gather real-world performance data on future flight profiles and off-nominal scenarios”.
