SpaceX rocket reaches orbit for first time after engine scare

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is celebrating a win this morning after SpaceX’s Starship rocket, the largest and most powerful ever built, entered orbit for the first time - but not everything went according to plan.

One of the engines on the Super Heavy booster shut down during the initial ascent from Starbase in Texas, but the remaining five engines compensated for it by burning longer, SpaceX confirmed in a report.

Nonetheless, the engine issue triggered an early return to Earth “out of an abundance of caution”, with Starship landing in a prearranged cleared landing zone in the Pacific Ocean instead of completing six orbits of the planet.

The flight was still a significant milestone for Musk’s spacefaring company, with Starship also delivering 26 Starlink satellites into orbit and coasting at 275km above the Earth’s surface at speeds of 28,000km/hr.

It was Starship’s 14th full-scale launch from Texas’ southern tip in three years.

The earlier test flights ventured no farther than the Indian Ocean halfway around the world, often crashing in flames and briefly skimming space.

SpaceX wants to ensure that everything works before flying Starship back to Starbase.

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If the spacecraft breaks apart over land and rains debris onto people, “our popularity would diminish very rapidly,” Musk said at a business summit earlier this month. “That’s why we’re being extremely cautious here.”

Depending on the findings from this orbital debut, the next Starship could return to the launch pad with giant mechanical arms grabbing the hovering spacecraft.

If the catch works - Musk gives it even or slightly better odds - then SpaceX will refly the spacecraft by year’s end or early next year.

The 124m rocket was designed from the start to be fully reusable - a key to lowering launch costs.

SpaceX managed to salvage the last Starship from the Indian Ocean in July.

Engineers modified the newly launched Starship’s heat shield based on hands-on inspections from the recovered spacecraft, which is being tugged back to Starbase.

SpaceX is pressing hard to certify Starship for orbital flight, a vital step toward moon and Mars travel.

NASA’s Artemis III mission is coming up as soon as next summer, a triple-launch docking exercise in orbit around Earth between an Orion capsule full of astronauts and competing lunar landers.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Moon will blast off first, then Orion - which will close in for a linkup - then Musk’s Starship for a docking with Orion once Blue Moon is unleashed.

The next mission - Artemis IV slated for no sooner than 2028 - would have astronauts landing on the moon in either Blue Moon or Starship, whichever is ready first. Subsequent moonshots will alternate between the two billionaires’ landers.

Musk originally developed Starship for Mars, intending to launch scores of them with the red planet’s first settlers.

For now, he plans to focus on the moon and use Starship to haul satellites into orbit by the truckload, phasing out the company’s frailer Falcon 9 rocket within several years.

A second Starship launch site is nearing completion at Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre and a third is planned for Louisiana.