SpaceX on Monday launched its 11th test flight of the Starship megarocket, moving the company one step closer to its goal of bringing humans back to the moon and eventually to Mars.

Cape Canaveral

SpaceX has successfully launched its Starship megarocket on its 11th test flight, making it the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. The flight, which is the fifth Starship launch this year, tested critical systems including stage separation and the heat shield, with the spacecraft targeting a precise splashdown in the Indian Ocean. 

The test is part of SpaceX's broader goal to develop reusable spacecraft capable of carrying humans and cargo to the moon and Mars. NASA is investing in Starship for future lunar missions, while Blue Origin, another private company, is also developing a lunar lander for NASA, aiming to deliver cargo and robots to the moon.

SpaceX launches Starship megarocket's 11th test flight

three, two, one. We have liftoff. Go super heavy. Go Starship. Thanks for all the historic flights. Bad one. That's liftoff for flight 11 of the Space X Starship Mega rocket at over 400 ft tall. It is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. Today's flight marks the fifth Starship launch so far this year, moving Space X one step closer to its goal of bringing humans back to the moon and eventually to Mars. So I want to bring in CBS News space contributor Christian Davenport with more on this. So a successful launch that left the pad. Thank goodness. And the main objectives for this test flight. What are we watching for? Yeah. So as you noted, the Starship lifted off just about 15 minutes ago. So far, everything appears to be going well. The first stage booster let all 33 of its engines. That's right. There are 33 engines on that first stage. There was a stage separation, and now the spacecraft, the second stage is making its way across the globe where it's going to splash down in the Indian Ocean. And what Space X needs to do is test out all of those components, particularly that heat shield. As it reenters into the atmosphere, there's a lot of heat that is generated there, and they also have to have the spacecraft hit a pinpoint landing. They've actually picked out a spot in the Indian Ocean where they want that spacecraft to land. It's sort of a test for the spacecraft to be reusable, but also eventually for it to be able to hit its target to land on the moon. So when it comes to technology, what are the major hurdles to reaching the moon and eventually Mars? Yeah, you know, this is just really a suborbital flight that goes across the country. There's nobody on it right now. But if you're going to take human beings, say, to the moon 240,000 miles away, you've got to have robust life support systems to keep them alive for a period of time. But landing on the moon is very difficult. There's no atmosphere. There's no air to slow down the vehicle as it's making its way down. And as of yet, there are no landing pads on the moon. And there's a lot of rocks, a lot of craters or boulders. It can be quite precarious. So it's not easy at all. And NASA's goal, and NASA's investing billions of dollars into SpaceX's Starship to ferry its astronauts to the lunar surface and back, they don't want to just do an Apollo-like landing where the astronauts go there, they spend some time, plan a flag, prance around, pick up some rocks. They want to build a permanent presence where they're going to stay. And that requires a vehicle like Starship that can take an enormous amount of mass and cargo and supplies ahead of time to set up a lunar settlement. And of course, that's also potentially the goal that SpaceX and Elon Musk have for Mars. If you're going to go to Mars, you're going to need a lot of cargo and supplies to keep people alive for a long period of time. And as we're talking with you, we are actually looking at live pictures of them opening the payload door. And if we talk about, let's say, Blue Origin, also, it has a launch coming up. How is that company similar and how is it different to SpaceX as we watch these live pictures? Yeah, so Blue Origin is the company founded by Jeff Bezos. And Blue Origin's goal from early on was to go to the moon. SpaceX actually initially won the contract to build the spacecraft, which we're watching now, Starship, to land NASA's astronauts on the lunar surface. But as it turns out, Blue Origin also won one of those contracts, and it's building its own lunar lander. So you have not one, but two private American companies working on spacecraft to ferry NASA astronauts to the lunar surface. That's something really extraordinary. But Blue Origin, as it turns out, has a lander that's not going to fly people. It's going to fly cargo and robots, eventually a rover, and that it hopes to land on the moon by as early as next year. And therefore, you could have Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin actually beat Elon Musk and SpaceX back to the moon. Christian Davenport. Christian, thank you.

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