Thursday’s engine firing test at the launch pad marked a major milestone in SpaceX’s preparations to launch the massive Starship spaceship into orbit.
Thirty-one of the first stage’s thirty-three booster engines fired off at the same time in south Texas for around ten seconds. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, tweeted that his crew had disabled two engines—”but still enough engines to achieve orbit”—before delivering the firing instruction.
If all goes well with the test analysis and final preparations, Musk says the first orbital test flight of Starship may happen as soon as March.
The test went off without a hitch, with the booster securely fastened to the pad the whole time. The launch tower showed no obvious evidence of damage.
Eventually, NASA hopes to have Starship connect with its Orion capsule in lunar orbit and transport people to the moon’s surface. Musk eventually hopes to utilize the massive Starships to transport large groups of people to Mars.
The test on Thursday only involved the 230-foot-tall (69-meter-tall) first stage of the Super Heavy rocket. The cutting-edge second stage, which will make the moon and Mars landings, was still in the hangar awaiting launch.
When fully extended, Starship’s height is 394 feet (120 meters), making it the tallest and most powerful rocket ever constructed. Nearly twice as powerful as NASA’s moon rocket, which carried an empty capsule to and from the moon late last year, it can generate 17 million pounds of liftoff thrust.
