WATCH: SpaceX inches closer to orbital launch, test-fires Starship booster with 31 Raptor rockets

SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster, one-half of the company’s Starship rocket system, momentarily roared to life for the first time on Thursday, bringing the giant moon and Mars vehicle one step closer to its first orbital mission in the coming months.     Thirty-one of the Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor rocket engines ignited for around 10 seconds at SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, facilities, Elon Musk tweeted immediately after the test, which was broadcast live.

First static fire attempt of 33 Raptor engines on Booster 7 https://t.co/3haor6owfa

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 9, 2023

“Team turned off 1 engine just before start & 1 stopped itself, so 31 engines fired overall,” Musk tweeted. “But still enough engines to reach orbit!"

Team turned off 1 engine just before start & 1 stopped itself, so 31 engines fired overall.

But still enough engines to reach orbit! https://t.co/QYx3oVM4Gw

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2023

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; While the 23-story-tall rocket remained strapped in place vertically atop a platform adjacent to a launch tower, the engines were ignited amid a boom of orange flames and billowing clouds of vapour. Super Heavy takes the lead When combined with its upper-stage Starship spaceship, the entire vehicle will tower 394 feet (120 metres) tall, taller than the Statue of Liberty, and will serve as the centrepiece of Musk’s hopes to someday inhabit Mars. However, plans call for it to first take the lead in NASA’s resumed human exploration of the moon. It was unclear if SpaceX will do another static-fire test of the Super Heavy with all 33 engines before attempting to launch the powerful, next-generation rocket into orbit for the first time. That launch, a test mission taking off from Texas and landing off the coast of Hawaii, could take place “in the next month or two,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said at a conference on Wednesday, adding the precise timing was dependent on the results of Thursday’s static fire test. “Keep in mind that this is a test flight,” Shotwell remarked. “The true aim is to keep the launch pad from blowing up; that is success." A long and arduous road to this milestone In July 2022, a prior test launch of a Super Heavy booster resulted in the vehicle’s engine section erupting in flames. Previously, SpaceX has launched Starship’s top half in a series of “hop” flights to a height of around 6 miles to show the rocket’s landing capabilities. Except for one, they all crashed. According to the live stream commentators for the space media group NASA Spaceflight, Thursday’s test-firing of the 31 Raptor engines appeared to set a new record for the most thrust ever produced by a single rocket - roughly 17 million pounds compared to 10.5 million pounds for the Russian N1, and 8 million pounds for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. They also claimed that it was the most rocket engines ever fired simultaneously, surpassing the N1’s 30 engines. Furthermore, the thrust from Super Heavy’s 33 engines would significantly exceed that of the first stage of the Saturn V, the famed NASA rocket that launched humans to the moon during the Apollo programme in the 1960s and 1970s. On the way to Mars The construction of the Starship is partially sponsored by a $3 billion contract with NASA, which wants to utilise the SpaceX rocket in the coming years to land the first crew of people on the moon since 1972 as part of the multibillion-dollar Artemis mission. NASA engineers in Mississippi tested a revised version of the agency’s own rocket engines, the Aerojet Rocketdyne-built RS-25, which will power future SLS flights, on Wednesday. The SLS and Starship spacecraft are presently at the forefront of NASA’s Artemis programme, which aims to create a permanent base on the moon as a stepping stone to human exploration of Mars. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.