Musk reaches another milestone for future Mars missions

After three consecutive failures this year alone, Elon Musk has successfully completed the latest test flight of his world's largest rocket, Starship. The mission, featuring a technically improved rocket and changes to the flight profile, marks a milestone for the future use of the monster rocket, for example, for a manned moon landing or Mars missions . For the first time, eight mock-ups of Starlink internet satellites were deployed into space as payload. The recently failed maneuver involving the soft landing of the Starship upper stage in the Indian Ocean off Australia also succeeded this time. Shortly after touching down, Starship exploded.

The 123-meter-tall, 5,310-ton rocket lifted off at 6:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday from the Starbase spaceport of the aerospace company SpaceX in the US state of Texas for its tenth test flight. The launch, originally scheduled for Sunday, had to be postponed twice: first due to technical problems at the launch facility, and then on Monday due to storm clouds. But this time everything went according to plan.

After a few minutes of flight time, the 70-meter-high propulsion stage, known as the Super Heavy Booster, separated and landed gently in the Gulf of Mexico. This time, the booster stage was not retrieved from the launch tower by robotic arms. This spectacular maneuver was achieved for the first time during the fifth test flight in October 2024.

SpaceX broadcast the entire flight live online with razor-sharp images from the rocket itself. The launch of eight mock-ups of a new generation of Starlink internet satellites, which have 20 times the capacity of previous Starlink satellites, was met with great acclaim. In the future, a Starlink rocket will be able to carry 60 satellites into space per flight, twice the current capacity of the Falcon rocket.

Despite the successful Starship flight, the rocket is not yet qualified for a manned US lunar mission, which, after several postponements, is not planned before 2027. For example, refueling tests in space are still missing, which are only planned for the future third-generation Starship next year. Furthermore, the rocket has never completed a complete orbit of the Earth, so it is not yet an orbital rocket.

Whether NASA will succeed in landing a manned spacecraft on the moon before the Chinese with the mission known as Artemis III is questionable. US President Donald Trump is relying on Elon Musk's SpaceX for the project. While China is implementing its space plans without delay, the US lunar program has been plagued by changes to plans and setbacks.

The Starship rocket was designed by billionaire and technology entrepreneur Elon Musk as the world's first fully reusable rocket. His space company, SpaceX, is by far the market leader and is considered a pacesetter in the rocket industry. This year, SpaceX's successful Falcon 9 rocket has already completed over 100 launches. SpaceX is also currently the only US provider of manned flights to the International Space Station (ISS). A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule just docked with the ISS.

Elon Musk is demonstrating a high level of risk-taking in Starship development and is committed to the philosophy of learning from mistakes, setbacks, and even explosions. In June, a Starship upper stage exploded during a ground test. The test flights are designed to collect data. The past failures with the Starship upper stage are being used as impetus for changes to the rocket that are to be implemented in the third generation. The next generation of the Starship rocket will have 42 engines and be even more powerful, Musk explained in June.

Musk paints a rosy picture of the future of the Starship rocket. The entrepreneur argues that the rocket is necessary for humanity's survival through the colonization of Mars and other planets. He recently expressed his expectation that "in about six or seven years, there will be days when Starship launches more than 24 times within 24 hours."

The rocket's production facilities in Texas are to be designed to produce up to 1,000 units per year. This would allow SpaceX to produce more mega-rockets annually than Airbus aircraft. As Musk has now stated, the Starship rocket could also compete with long-distance flight. At 25 times the speed of sound, the route from Los Angeles to Sydney could be completed in less than half an hour.