admin SpaceX’s Starship rocket, designed to take humans to Moon, Mars and beyond, will conduct its first orbital flight within six months and could be ferrying passengers next year, Chief Executive Elon Musk said as he revealed its reusable launch system.
The Starship rocket MK1, being developed in Texas, features three Raptor engines powered by cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen. It is 50 meter tall and weighs about 1,400 tonnes, Musk said.
He said the rocket at SpaceX’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas, on September 29, 2019, while marking the 11th anniversary of the SpaceX reaching the orbit for the first time.
With the company’s Super Heavy booster, Starship will be the largest and most powerful rocket ever made. A three-legged prototype of the rocket named Starhopper had in July launched two low-altitude flights, or ‘hops’ (152 meters) with a single Raptor engine. The triple-engine prototype Mk1 aims to fly upto an altitude of about 20 kilometers.
The Starship rocket will also deliver more than 100 metric tonnes of mass to the surface of the Moon or Mars, SpaceX said in a tweet.
SpaceX, which has till date completed 78 launches, is assembling the second prototype, MK2, at its facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida, while work on the third prototype, MK3, would begin construction at Boca Chica “about a month”.
The rocket will be tested in “one to two months” and carry its first passengers at some point next year, Musk claimed.
It will carry as many as 100 people on long-duration, interplanetary flights, SpaceX said in a tweet.
SpaceX is one of the two main contractors on the programme (the other is Boeing), and is developing its Crew Dragon module for Nasa’s astronauts to travel to the International Space Station and beyond.
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