Starship is capable of carrying crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars.
SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, exploded just after liftoff during a test flight today in Texas.
Here are 10 facts on SpaceX's Starship rocket
- Starship is a fully reusable transportation system that is designed to carry both - humans and cargo to Earth orbit, the moon, and beyond.
- Starship is the world's most powerful launch vehicle that is capable of carrying up to 150 metric tonnes of reusable fuel.
- Starship is capable of carrying crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond and is capable of point-to-point transport to Earth, enabling travel to anywhere in the world in one hour or less.
- Starship is capable of carrying up to 100 people on long-duration, interplanetary flights, which will help in satellite delivery.
- The liftoff of Starship was postponed by 48 hours on Monday, just minutes before the scheduled launch time due to a pressurization issue in the booster stage.
- NASA has picked up Starship to ferry humans to the Moon in late 2025 for the Artemis III mission, the first moon mission since the Apollo program ended in 1972.
- The lower-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship vessel are designed to be used as reusable components to perform reentry to Earth for soft landings.
- If the test flight had been successful, the Super Heavy booster would have executed the beginnings of a controlled return flight before plunging into the Gulf of Mexico.
- Elon Musk's Starship is designed to be two times more powerful than NASA's own Space Launch System (SLS) which made its debut uncrewed flight to orbit in November last year.
- If the test flight had been successful, the Starship and the Super Heavy, a booster of the Starship launch system, would've been a key milestone in Elon Musk's SpaceX's ambition to send humans back then and to Mars.
