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Elon Musk’s Starship finally launches on 10th attempt

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It only took a handful of explosions – and the kind of budget that could bankroll a small nation – but on the 10th attempt, Elon Musk’s Starship finally launched.

SpaceX’s rocket – the billionaire’s big bet on colonising Mars – departed from south Texas at around 7.30pm local time on Tuesday, after a long year of crashes.

The giant 403-foot-tall system launched into orbit before deploying eight dummy satellites.

Parts of the engine appeared to explode at one stage, and flaps on the side of the rocket caught fire and swung from side-to-side.

Ignoring the mishaps, Musk posted on X: ‘Great work by the SpaceX team!!’

Much is riding on its success, particularly after three Starship launches ended in failure this year, and one rocket exploded on the launch pad in June.

Musk has previously said every Starship test flight costs between $50 million to $100 million (£37 million to £74 million), making a small dent into his fortune.

NASA picked Starship to put its first astronauts on the moon’s surface since the Apollo program.

And Musk sees Starship, designed to be fully reusable, as core to fulfilling his goal of routinely ferrying humans to Mars.

The CEO said on Monday on a SpaceX live strea: ‘There are thousands of engineering challenges that remain, for both the ship and the booster, but maybe the single biggest one is the reusable orbital heat shield.’

The mission concluded with a steady, engine-guided vertical landing on the Indian Ocean’s surface, west of Australia.

The Starship then toppled over before exploding into a giant fireball, an expected demise likely triggered by its flight termination system.

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