SpaceX Starship blasts off from Texas as Super Heavy rocket explodes on splash down

STARBASE, Texas - SpaceX’s massive Starship blasted off from the company’s base in South Texas on Friday evening.

Timeline:

The launch window for Flight 15 opened at 4:45 p.m. CT.

The company aimed for this to be the first time that both Starship and the Super Heavy Rocket that it rides to space on return to the launch site. However, the rocket was forced to splash down in the ocean in a fiery crash.

The plan calls for a flight that lasts about 22 hours as Starship orbits Earth 14 times and deploys 26 Starlink V3 satellites.

SpaceX said that if Starship can’t return to the launch site, there are several opportunities for it to de-orbit and splashdown in the ocean.

Flight 15 comes less than 2 months after Flight 14

The backstory:

Starship’s Flight 14 in September saw the spacecraft achieve orbit of Earth and the deployment of Starlink satellites.

However, the mission was cut short and Starship was forced to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean about three hours after launch.

Starship’s importance to SpaceX

What's next:

The ultimate goal of Elon Musk’s SpaceX is to use Starship to carry settlers to Mars.

Before that long-term goal, the company will be part of NASA’s Artemis III mission slated for the summer of 2027. That flight will test a complex orbital docking exercise between an Orion capsule used by NASA to send astronauts to the Moon and lunar landers from SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Moon.

Artemis IV, slated for no sooner than 2028, aims to send humans back to the Moon’s surface.

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