SpaceX Starship V3 first flight: all 33 Raptors lit, 22 dummy sats deployed, Indian Ocean splashdown
SpaceX flew Starship V3 for the first time Thursday after a Wednesday scrub over a stuck hydraulic pin on the tower arm. All 33 Raptors lit, the ship deployed 22 dummy sats and splashed down in the Indian Ocean. Super Heavy crashed in the Gulf as planned. Sources: Space, CNN
SpaceX flew the first integrated test of its new Starship Version 3 megarocket on Thursday, May 22, from Starbase in South Texas. The launch came one day after a scrub: in the final seconds of Wednesday's countdown, a hydraulic pin holding the tower arm in place failed to retract, and the flight was halted. On the retry, all 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster lit at liftoff. The vehicle reached an orbital trajectory described as within the planned bounds, and the upper-stage ship deployed a batch of 22 dummy satellites, two of them carrying cameras pointed at the heat shield. The ship later completed a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean despite operating without one of its engines. The Super Heavy booster failed its boost-back burn and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, but it was not planned to be recovered on this flight. The test was the first orbital outing of the larger Starship V3 design, and SpaceX framed the overall mission as a successful debut for the new configuration. Sources: Space, CNN