Starship is a two-stage mega-launch rocket. Its first stage is the Super Heavy booster. It is a rocket in the first stage of a multi-stage rocket, used, among other things, to increase the take-off thrust. The second stage is Starship, which is a spaceship. The Starship rocket is the largest and most powerful in the world – it measures over 121 m, with a diameter of 9 m; its mass after fueling is 5,000 tons.
Will humans live on Mars?
The rocket is not only supposed to carry the largest payloads into orbit and significantly reduce the cost of such transport, but it is also supposed to play a key role in the colonization of the Moon, later Mars, and in general in flights into deep space. A sufficiently large fleet of Starships may even allow for a permanent transport connection with the Moon.
There have been four tests of the mega-rocket so far. During the first, in April 2023, the spacecraft exploded in mid-air. The explosion occurred about 4 minutes after launch when it failed to separate from the Super Heavy rocket carrying it. Another failed test occurred in November 2023. The upper stage of the rocket separated from the first stage, but it exploded after separation. During the third flight (March 2024), Starship performed the first atmospheric reentry maneuver from space. It was destroyed at the time, but during the flight, engineers collected a lot of invaluable data. In turn, during the fourth test flight on June 6 – as planned – a few minutes after launch, the booster separated and then fell into the Gulf of Mexico; the Starhip survived atmospheric reentry and was then launched.
Billionaire Musk’s company hopes that thanks to this project, humans will become an interplanetary species in the future, inhabiting, among others, the planet Mars. NASA, the American space agency, also has hopes for the SpaceX mission, which wants to send its astronauts to the Moon using the Starship rocket as part of the Artemis 3 mission, planned for 2026.
