Test flight comes after explosive failures raised doubts over founder Elon Musk’s goals to reach Mars and moon
Third time was the charm on Tuesday for the launch of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket after the launch had been scrubbed two times in as many days. The success of this 10th flight proved the spacecraft had overcome its past failures key to the Mars rocket’s reusable design.
The stainless steel behemoth, 403ft (123 meters) tall, lifted off from the company’s Starbase in southern Texas at 6.30pm local time (2330 GMT), to loud cheers from engineering teams, a webcast showed. This mission was to be a test of the ship’s new heat shield tiles and satellite deployment abilities, among hundreds of other upgrades from past iterations.
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