Elon Musk's SpaceX launched its biggest Starship yet from Texas on Friday, the redesigned V3 mega-rocket NASA is counting on for crewed lunar landings, in the program's 12th test flight. The vehicle ended the flight in a planned splashdown and explosion in the Indian Ocean, the BBC reported in a video segment of the moment. The launch came two days after Musk announced SpaceX would go public, the Guardian reported.
The redesigned upper stage made its debut in the same flight, a configuration shift that consolidates the design intended to carry crew under NASA's Artemis lunar contract. SpaceX engineers had targeted a controlled re-entry with a planned hot-staging explosion at splashdown, and the vehicle performed the maneuver before destructing on schedule.
The 12th test sat in close proximity to the IPO announcement, DW reported, putting the V3's first flight in front of a market that will now be asked to value SpaceX as a listed entity. The IPO timeline has not been disclosed in detail, and the Starship program — long the most ambitious and most expensive part of SpaceX's roadmap — is the line item that will draw the closest investor scrutiny.
The V3's debut adds an operational data point to the moonshot pitch: NASA's plan to land astronauts on the lunar surface again depends on a working Starship variant, and the Friday flight is the longest validation yet of the V3 configuration in flight, the Guardian reported. Musk has separately said the broader Starship effort is aimed at taking people to Mars, a goal that remains far beyond the current vehicle's demonstrated envelope.
Figures referenced: Elon Musk. — JudgeMarket.
