Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, successfully completed the 10th test launch of the super heavy space launch vehicle 'Starship,' which is being developed by the space company SpaceX with the goal of exploring the Moon and Mars.
According to local media including CNN on the 26th (local time), Starship was launched from the SpaceX Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas, at 6:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (8:30 a.m. on the 27th in Korea). After the Super Heavy booster landed in the Gulf of Mexico to the east of the launch site, Starship safely landed in the Indian Ocean about an hour later.
SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot noted, "It's an achievement after a year," adding, "Starship hasn't had such a clean flight since 2024." CNN assessed that "it seems SpaceX has finally found a way to bring the new version of Starship back after safely passing through Earth's atmosphere while maintaining communication."
During the launch, Starship also succeeded in an experiment to deploy 8 mock satellites the same size as the low-orbit internet satellite Starlink into sub-orbit. About 19 minutes after liftoff, Starship began releasing the deployed satellites into space one by one, successfully expelling all 8. The successful satellite deployment confirmed that Starship could perform satellite launch missions instead of its main launch vehicle, 'Falcon 9.'
This test flight was the third attempt after the launch was delayed twice due to ground system issues on the 24th and bad weather on the 25th. One of the key tasks of this test was to conduct an experiment to deploy 8 satellite models from the top of Starship. Earlier, in January, the 7th flight, the 8th flight in March, and the 9th flight in May attempted the same experiment, but the first two were aborted due to explosions, and the 9th flight was skipped due to technical issues. However, no such problems occurred during this flight.