The new, juiced-up model of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket simply cleared an enormous hurdle on the trail to its first-ever launch.
That liftoff, focused for early or mid-May, would be the twelfth general for Starship however the first for the automobile’s “Version 3,” which is greater and extra highly effective than its predecessors.
“Full-duration static fire for the first time on Starship V3,” the corporate wrote via X.
The milestone got here 4 weeks after the first static fire of a Starship V3 first stage, a trial that concerned simply 10 of the booster’s 33 Raptor engines and ended early because of a problem with floor tools.
When stacked, Starship V3 stands 408.1 ft (124.4 meters) tall — about 4 ft (1.2 m) taller than its quick predecessor, the V2.
The V3 can be way more highly effective, because of its new V3 Raptor engines. This newest Starship variant can carry greater than 100 tons to low Earth orbit, in comparison with about 35 tons for the V2, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said.
Starship has flown 11 suborbital test missions thus far, most not too long ago in October 2025. The 5 newest launches have been carried out by the V2.
SpaceX is working to get the megarocket prepared for astronaut missions to the moon; NASA chosen Starship to be the primary crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program.
The company’s Artemis 2 mission simply despatched 4 astronauts across the moon and again to Earth. NASA is now gearing up for Artemis 3, which can test docking operations in Earth orbit between the company’s Orion capsule and one or each of Artemis’ contracted moon landers — Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon.
Artemis 3 is focused to launch in mid-2027. If all goes properly with that mission, Artemis 4 will put astronauts down close to the lunar south pole in late 2028, aboard both Starship or Blue Moon.
