Today's third test flight of the SpaceX Megarocket Starship achieved several key milestones. However, the spacecraft was lost as it reentered the Earth's atmosphere. Today, the world's most powerful rocket blasted off from Boca Chica Beach in South Texas this morning. The unmanned Starship traveled about halfway around the Earth during a nearly 5p minute flight, but the company said it lost contact with the spacecraft as it neared its goal of a splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Two test flights of Starship earlier this year ended with explosions just minutes after liftoff, so today's flight was considered a success by SpaceX and NASA. The goal is to use Starship eventually to land astronauts on the moon, and that should happen on what we learned from today's launch, we Abhishek Tripathi, the director of mission operations at UC Berkeley. Abhi. Good to have you on. Always a pleasure. So how much of an achievement was today's Starship launch? Was this a win? >> Yes, it was most definitely a win. I always measure in terms of are they making good substantive progress or are they repeating mistakes? So this test clearly showed substantive progress. First and foremost, they were able to separate the booster stage cleanly from the upper stage. The starship last time, as you may recall, right during separation, is when the booster stage blew up. This time they succeeded in what they call a hot stage separation burn, and theútwo cleanly separated with the starship making orbit. That's success number two. Last time the starship upper stage was not able to make orbitl it blew up. This time it made it to space and completed its full durationC upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere, burning up was made between the last attempt and this obviously with each of these test flights, you're trying to learn from what went wrong. And that's doing here. So you you look at what happened td try to learn from that. And make sure that you have a successful splashdown next time aroundC? >> Yeah, typically what you do aerospace company or even the government, you do lots and lots of analysis until you were able to hopefully nail it on the first time. This time, because SpaceX is first stage actually survived separation and made it a good way down, it got a lot of do is they're going to take that data to improve the algorithms order bit more on the landingin attempt. So I have a lot of confidence they'll they'll make a good solid attempt at a landing, if not a full landing on the next one. Likewise stagee picture not realize this either, but we have never seen that sort of a plasma on a real live video before, the only reason we've beenúableúto see it on this mission isúbecause SpaceX is using its Starlink satellites to relay the video, so that in itself is amazing data. >> Yeah, just just to see those pictures. Obviously,úwe know here that the long terme goal with all of these test is to be able to send humans, astronauts to the southern pole of the moon, hopefully by 2026. That that's the goal that's been laid out here based on the progress that we with these three test launches here, how does it seem like we are on track? >> I think today's test should give NASA a lot of confidence. However, with human spaceflight, you have a goal. You need a goal. But safety and precaution is first and foremost. NASA and SpaceX working together by monta year if theyúfeel they don't have the safety data they need yet. But this type of goal, this ambitious goal of 20r6, is needed to drive it forward and remind us all of the significance of, of these test flights when it comes to this vr notion of space travel. >> What is the significance of these flights? >> Yeah, this rocket a rocket as normal measure Spsuccessúof the n it be launched rapidly many, many times a week orúmonth? And, itúbends Yeah. And so wegll seef they get it back down with a successful landing here the next go around, then certainly would seem like they are on their way. We appreciate the insight.
