The third test flight of Starship, the SpaceX spaceship designed to be completely and rapidly reusable and to allow it to reach the Moon and Mars, took off: the launch took place at 2.25 pm Italian time from the Starbase site in South Texas .
This third test has much more ambitious goals than the previous ones, such as "the successful ignition of both stages, the opening and closing of the hatch for the release of the satellites, a simulation of the transfer of propellant, and then - writes SpaceX in a description of the mission – the first-ever restart of a Raptor engine in space and the controlled re-entry of the Starship.”
Furthermore, Elon Musk's company aims to have the upper stage of the rocket dive into the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about 1 hour after launch, while the landing area planned for the first two missions was located in the Pacific Ocean , near Hawaii.
This test will therefore also be important to understand the actual reusability of the spaceship, a feature that according to Musk will usher in a revolution in space flight.
The third test comes after the two flights in April and November 2023, which however did not go exactly as planned.
In the first test the two stages of the rocket, the largest and most powerful ever built, with a height of 122 meters and 33 engines generating almost 7.5 million kilograms of thrust, did not separate correctly and the flight ended after just four minutes, when Starship was detonated for safety reasons.
Progress was made in November: stage separation was successful, but before the second stage could reach orbit, contact was lost and it was then detonated again about 12 minutes later.
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