SpaceX completes the 11th test flight of its Starship, the biggest rocket ever made

"SpaceX launched another of its mammoth Starship rockets on a test flight Monday, successfully making it halfway around the world while releasing mock satellites like last time.Starship - the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built - thundered into the evening sky from the southern tip of Texas. The booster peeled away and made a controlled entry into the Gulf of Mexico as planned, with the spacecraft skimming space before descending into the Indian Ocean. Nothing was recovered."

""Hey, welcome back to Earth, Starship," SpaceX's Dan Huot announced as employees cheered. "What a day."It was the 11th test flight for a full-scale Starship, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk intends to use to send people to Mars. NASA's need is more immediate. The space agency cannot land astronauts on the moon by decade's end without the 403-foot (123-meter) Starship, the reusable vehicle meant to get them from lunar orbit down to the surface and back up."

Starship launched from Starbase near the Mexican border and completed a flight lasting just over an hour, carrying eight mock satellites. The booster separated and performed a controlled entry into the Gulf of Mexico while the spacecraft skimmed space and descended into the Indian Ocean. SpaceX conducted entry maneuvers over the Indian Ocean as practice for future landings and added more spacecraft maneuvering compared with prior flights. The flight marked the 11th full-scale Starship test. NASA views Starship as essential for landing astronauts on the moon, and SpaceX is modifying Cape Canaveral sites to support Starship operations.

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