SpaceX's Starship rocket completed its tenth test flight on Tuesday, deploying dummy Starlink satellites and testing new heat shield tiles. Starship is central to NASA's plan for a crewed lunar landing and to Tesla billionaire Elon Musk's goal of making spaceflight fully reusable and capable of carrying humans to Mars. What did Starship achieve in this flight? The 123-meter (403-foot) vehicle lifted off at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT) and separated from its Super Heavy booster three minutes into flight.
Chinese satellites SJ-21 and SJ-25 merged on July 2, indicating a potential high-altitude orbital refueling capability, enabling possibly military applications such as disabling foreign satellites.