SpaceX's Starship reaches Earth orbit in its 14th test, a key step for Artemis

NASA's mission to set foot on the Moon again is a little closer today: the Starship megarocket from SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, has finally reached Earth orbit and has been located about 300 kilometers away from Earth, a decisive step so that the most powerful space vehicle developed, together with NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), is operational and can transport payloads to space.

It was in the fourteenth test, which is being carried out this Monday from the launch pad of SpaceX's Starbase complex in Texas, located next to the Gulf of Mexico, near Brownsville. The beginning of test number 14 has been full of emotion. During the official live broadcast, SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot initially stated that Starship would fail to reach orbit because one of its engines had shut down earlier than expected. However, minutes later it rectified after receiving an update from engineers, who confirmed that the ship could still attempt a key ignition to successfully propel itself into orbital space.

The objective is for the spacecraft to make six orbits of the Earth during which it must deploy the first batch of operational Starlink satellites, making it by far the most ambitious Starship mission to date, and the longest, as it is expected to last 10 hours. At 3:54 p.m. (Spanish peninsular time), the company confirmed that it had successfully deployed the satellites in its network, and had managed to communicate with the 26 devices.

The space vehicle consists of two parts - the SuperHeavy booster and the Starship capsule - and in total measures just over 120 meters high. Elon Musk plans to use it for missions to the Moon and Mars. NASA chose SpaceX to develop a version of the Starship capsule that would be used to take astronauts who are part of the Artemis 4 mission, scheduled for 2028, to the surface of the Moon.

Before, for 2027, Artemis 3 is planned, a test mission in which the Orion ship will orbit the Earth, testing the docking with this SpaceX ship and with another one being developed by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' company.

Both vehicles are in development, in a race against time to have their vehicles ready for Artemis 3. And being able to reach Earth orbit was a key step on that path.

Once it completes six orbits, the spacecraft is expected to land in the Pacific Ocean, west of Chile.

In his initial forecasts, Elon Musk predicted that this achievement would arrive in 2022, followed by the operational deployment of satellites in 2023. But it was not until April 20, 2023 when they did the first test of the vehicle. The previous 13 test flights were restricted to suborbital space. It is estimated that around 15 billion dollars have been invested in this program. Despite the delays, Musk maintains his goal of launching hundreds or thousands of Starships a year in the future.