SpaceX’s largest, most powerful starship to date just breathed fire for the first time.
On Monday (March 16), the company carried out a static fire test with Spaceshipits “Super Heavy” first stage, briefly igniting the booster’s engines while the vehicle remained docked to Pad 2 at SpaceX’s Star base site in South Texas.
It was the first static fire ever for a Version 3 (V3) vehicle – the last iteration of the Starship, which SpaceX developer to help humanity put on boots the moon and March. The test was groundbreaking in another way, too: It was the first to occur on Pad 2, which will double Starbase’s launch capacity when it comes online.
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“The first Super Heavy V3 and Starbase Pad 2 activation campaign completed, concluding several days of testing that loaded cryogenic fuel and oxidizer onto a V3 vehicle for the first time,” SpaceX wrote via X on Wednesday (March 18), in a post that shared four photos of the Super Heavy, known as Booster 19, on the pad.
That post also revealed that the static fire involved only 10 engines and “ended early due to a problem from the ground.” The next step will be a static fire with Booster 19’s full complement of 33 Raptor engines, 23 of which still need to be installed.
Monday’s operation was part of the course of Starship’s 12th ever test flight, which SpaceX wants to launch in early to mid April. That mission will be the first ever for a V3 vehicle. Booster 19 will fly with a Starship upper stage called Ship 39, as recently passed a key “cryoproofing” test on Starbase’s Massey site.
Starship V3 is slightly taller than V2 — 408.1 feet (124.4 meters) vs. 403.9 feet (123.1 m). Thanks to the new V3 Raptor engine, the latest variant is also significantly more powerful: It can tow more than 100 tons more low earth orbitcompared to about 35 tons for Starship V2, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk have said.
The V3 is also the first iteration of the megarocket capable of traveling to the Moon and Mars. But there are a number of boxes to check before it can attempt to do so – such as successfully reaching Earth’s orbit, and demonstrating the ability to refuel its fuel tanks away from our planet.
