Starship spacecraft mounted on Super Heavy rocket launched on March 14
Reuters reported on March 14 that the Starship spacecraft of SpaceX (USA) was just launched into the sky of Texas state in the third test, designed to later take astronauts to the moon and beyond.
The two-stage rocket lifted off at the company's launch site near Boca Chica on an unmanned space flight.
This is the third launch, with the Starship spacecraft mounted on a 70-meter-tall Super Heavy rocket. Both were designed and built by the company founded by billionaire Elon Musk in 2002.
Notably, the launch came less than 24 hours after federal regulators granted SpaceX a test launch license.
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Last year's two tests were primarily aimed at proving that the two stages could separate after launch. The latest test involved opening the payload bay door and restarting one of the engines in space.
The previous two flights were headed for a planned emergency landing near the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific , while the latest flight was aimed at the crash site in the Indian Ocean.
Regardless of how well the spacecraft performs in its latest test, all signs point to Starship still having a long way to go before it can become fully operational.
Still, billionaire Musk is counting on Starship to fulfill his goal of building a large, next-generation multipurpose spacecraft capable of taking people and cargo to the moon by the end of the decade and then on to Mars.
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