SpaceX launch of updated Starship V3 ‘delivered’ on first flight

May 22 (UPI) — SpaceX successfully launched an updated version of its Starship on Friday evening, meeting all goals the company said it was aiming for.

The launch was the first of the company’s V3 version of both the booster rocket and “Ship” upper stage, which is a key part of NASA’s Artemis series of missions to the moon and, potentially, to Mars.

SpaceX commentators said during the company’s official broadcast that the updated Starship, which delivered 22 simulator Starlink satellites into orbit and converted flight adjustments it will need when it lands instead splashing down in water, “delivered.”

The company had scrubbed the first attempted launch of the megarocket, the largest ever built, on Thursday because of an engineering issue that could not be fixed in time to make the scheduled launch window.

The mission for the 408-foot-tall Super Heavy rocket, which is powered by 33 newly redesigned Raptor engines, the same as Starship, was to successfully launch, ascend, separate from the second stage — Starship — and then perform boost back and landing burns before splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico.

After separation, Starship’s goals were to light its engines, enter a sub-orbital path and release a series of dummy Starlink satellites before performing a series of maneuvers and testing its newly designed heat shield.

When Starship splashed down in the Indian Ocean after its tests, SpaceX commentators said during the broadcast that the fireball when it hit the Indian Ocean was the goal, “as weird as that sounds.”

This version of Starship is not the final one, but rather is a prototype of one of several that are planned for NASA’s return of Americans to the moon.

NASA’s planned Artemis III mission in 2028 is expected to test connecting the Orion crew capsule — which was tested on its first crew mission earlier this year — to both Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon space vessel, which has yet to take its first flight.