July 24 (UPI) — SpaceX on Friday had a successful 13th flight test of Starship, the space vessel and rocket duo that is expected to help NASA return humans to the moon.
Starship lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas around 6:45 p.m. on a suborbital trajectory — just barely getting to space while performing a number of key maneuvers — before a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
Both SpaceX and its owner, Elon Musk, said in posts on X that the test was a success, most notably because of the significant improvement in performance for the ship’s heat shield during reentry.
They also said it was notable that after mimicking the way Starship will eventually land upright, the vessel did not explode upon landing in the Indian Ocean and was still transmitting telemetry data and video.
The test of Starship’s third iteration had been pushed back several times because of weather concerns, which would have interfered in parts of the SpaceX team’s test goals.
The flight was the second for the third version of Starship and its Super Heavy V3 booster, and accomplished — with updated systems — a similar set of test objectives as the 12th flight, SpaceX said.
“A key objective for the flight test is to get clear imagery from the ground of Starship’s heatshield as it flies at a higher dynamic pressure during ascent, which won’t be possible with today’s weather conditions,” SpaceX said in an update on X after scrubbing Thursday’s launch attempt.
“Visibility is forecast to be ideal for a Friday attempt,” the company said.
SpaceX said that upgrades to Starship for the 13th flight test have included changes to the vessel’s startup sequence and adjustments to Raptor engines on both its booster section and the ship itself.
The upgrades were meant to address issues with a small number of engines during boost back and relighting in space during the 12th flight test.
Starship also will be carrying 20 Starlink V3 satellites into space during the test flight, which SpaceX said “aim to greatly expand the network’s capacity and user speeds.”
