SpaceX tests giant Starship rocket ahead of 3rd flight

SpaceX’s Starship prototype Ship 28 completed a full-duration static fire with all six of its Raptor engines. Starship consists of two elements: a huge first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50 meters) upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship. Both of these stages are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, and both are powered by SpaceX’s next-generation Raptor engine. Starship has flown twice to date, on test flights in April and November of this year. Both missions aimed to send the upper stage most of the way around Earth, targeting a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. Neither flight achieved that goal. SpaceX wants to get Starship aloft again soon, as shown by the current testing of Ship 28 and its flight partner, a Super Heavy prototype called Booster 10. It’s unclear when that will happen, however. Even if testing continues to go well, SpaceX may still have to wait a while for a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Link to the original story: https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-static-fire-december-2023