Elon Musk’s Starship rocket made it to space – is the mission to Mars really on?

On 14 March, exactly 22 years after the company was founded, SpaceX achieved what is perhaps its most impressive feat yet. Measuring 120 metres tall – 24 metres taller than Big Ben’s tower – the firm’s Starship rocket lifted off from a launch pad on the southern tip of Texas. Less than nine minutes later, it had reached orbit for the first time.

Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built, and the world’s first fully reusable spacecraft designed to take both crew and cargo to the moon and beyond. When it attained orbital velocity, following two failed attempts in 2021 and 2023, it also became the heaviest single object ever sent into space.

This alone may not seem as remarkable as some of SpaceX’s other accomplishments. In just over two decades, the company has pioneered rockets capable of landing and relaunching, delivered astronauts to the International Space Station, and built a vast satellite network capable of beaming high-speed internet all over the globe. But this was the first solid indication that Starship could realise the extraordinary purpose for which it was built: to colonise another planet.