SpaceX fires up next-gen 'Model 3' Starship forward of Might take a look at flight (photographs)

The brand new, juiced-up model of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket simply cleared an enormous hurdle on the trail to its first-ever launch.

That liftoff, focused for early or mid-May, would be the twelfth total for Starship however the first for the automobile’s “Model 3,” which is greater and extra highly effective than its predecessors.

a dark, tall, conical spacecraft fires its engines on a test stand beneath a blue but cloudy sky — SpaceX is concentrating on subsequent month for Starship’s twelfth take a look at flight. (Picture credit score: SpaceX)

“Full-duration static hearth for the primary time on Starship V3,” the corporate wrote via X.

The milestone got here 4 weeks after the first static fire of a Starship V3 first stage, a trial that involved just 10 of the booster’s 33 Raptor engines and ended early due to an issue with ground equipment.

When stacked, Starship V3 stands 408.1 feet (124.4 meters) tall — about 4 feet (1.2 m) taller than its immediate predecessor, the V2.

Astroblog: GEOMAGNETIC WARNING June 12-14

James Webb Area Telescope discovers ‘galaxy-killing’ wind which will clarify why some early galaxies lived quick and died younger

‘Galactic archaeologists’ share the 2026 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics – Physics World

The V3 is also much more powerful, thanks to its new V3 Raptor engines. This latest Starship variant can carry more than 100 tons to low Earth orbit, compared to about 35 tons for the V2, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said.

Starship has flown 11 suborbital take a look at missions to this point, most lately in October 2025. The 5 newest launches have been carried out by the V2.

SpaceX is working to get the megarocket prepared for astronaut missions to the moon; NASA chosen Starship to be the primary crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program.

The company’s Artemis 2 mission simply despatched 4 astronauts across the moon and again to Earth. NASA is now gearing up for Artemis 3, which can take a look at docking operations in Earth orbit between the company’s Orion capsule and one or each of Artemis’ contracted moon landers — Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon.

Artemis 3 is focused to launch in mid-2027. If all goes nicely with that mission, Artemis 4 will put astronauts down close to the lunar south pole in late 2028, aboard both Starship or Blue Moon.

Source link