SpaceX's Starship, the company's super-heavy launch vehicle, reached Earth orbit for the first time, clearing a path to send next-generation Starlink satellites into space in large volumes and moving Chief Executive Elon Musk a step closer to his vision of a "space data center."
Starship lifted off from Starbase in Texas on the 28th, entered Earth orbit and released 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, according to Reuters and other foreign media.
The satellites connected normally to the existing Starlink network, marking the first time Starship has placed operational satellites into orbit.
The previous 13 test flights used trajectories that stopped short of full orbit for safety reasons. Reaching orbital velocity for the first time marks a turning point in Starship's transition from a test rocket to an actual space transport vehicle.
The flight was not flawless. One of the six Raptor engines on Starship's upper stage shut down during ascent. SpaceX reviewed the data and proceeded with orbital insertion using the remaining engines. The flight, originally planned to last about 10 hours, ended after roughly three hours as a safety precaution, and Starship made a controlled splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
Starship differs from Falcon 9, SpaceX's workhorse rocket, in both scale and design. Falcon 9, which weighs 22.8 tons, recovers and reuses only its first stage while the second stage is expended. Starship, by contrast, is a super-heavy transport vehicle designed to recover and reuse both its Super Heavy first stage and its upper stage. SpaceX aims to use it to send larger and heavier payloads into space in a single launch while cutting the number of launches and costs to a quarter of current levels. The company also expects a sharp increase in communications revenue from the V3 satellites, which carry more than 10 times the capacity of the earlier V2 model.
Starship's lift capacity matters for another reason: SpaceX is looking beyond Starlink to build artificial intelligence computing infrastructure in space. Musk plans to eventually put as many as 1 million AI data-processing satellites into orbit. The idea is to shift the enormous power and cooling demands of ground-based data centers to computing infrastructure paired with solar power in space. Starship is seen as the key transport vehicle for building out such a vast satellite network.
Commercializing space data centers, however, will require solving problems including semiconductors that can withstand cosmic radiation, cooling in a vacuum and ultra-high-speed communication between satellites.
