SpaceX’s Starship megarocket completed its first full flight on Thursday and returned to Earth unexploded after taking off from Texas.
It is the fourth launch of the world’s largest and most resilient rocket, which is about 400 feet (121 meters) tall. The previous three flight demonstrations ended in explosions. This time, the rocket and the spacecraft managed to crash in a controlled manner. making the one-hour flight the longest and most successful to date.
“Despite wasting a lot of tiles and a broken shutter, Starship managed to land softly in the ocean!”SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said X.
The spacecraft ran empty as it flew over the Gulf of Mexico and headed east to fly toward the Indian Ocean. Within minutes, the first-tier booster separated from the spacecraft and sank into the gulf exactly as planned, after firing its engines.
The spacecraft reached an altitude of about 211 kilometers (130 miles), traveling at more than 26,000 km/h (16,000 mph), before beginning its descent. Live perspectives showed parts of the spacecraft breaking through the intense heat of re-entry, but a broken camera lens obscured the images.
The spacecraft remained intact enough to transmit knowledge to its planned landing in the Indian Ocean.
This is a step in the company’s plan to eventually repurpose the rocket that NASA and Musk are counting on to take humanity to the Moon and then Mars.
“What a spectacle it was,” Kate Tice, a commentator on SpaceX’s launch, said from Mission Control at the company’s headquarters in California.
SpaceX has all but avoided explosions in March, but it lost contact with the craft when it left the area and exploded before achieving its goal. The booster also failed in flight, a quarter of a mile above the gulf.
The two control flights last year ended in explosions shortly after taking off from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. The first excavated the beach of Boca Chica and dumped debris thousands of feet (meters).
SpaceX updated the software and made some adjustments to the rocket to get it back in condition. The Federal Aviation Administration approved the fourth demonstration on Tuesday, saying all protection requirements had been met.
Starship is designed to be completely reusable. That’s why SpaceX needs the booster’s access to the Gulf and the spacecraft’s descent into the Indian Ocean — this is practice for long-term planned landings. Nothing was recovered from Thursday’s flight.
The company “made great strides” toward that goal, the company said on its website.
NASA has ordered a pair of spacecraft for two astronaut landing missions on the Moon, scheduled for later this decade. Each lunar team will rely on NASA’s rocket and capsule to leave Earth, but will return to Starship in lunar orbit for the descent to the Moon. surface.
SpaceX already sells tourist vacations around the Moon. The first personal lunar client, a Japanese tycoon, left the holiday with his entourage last week, citing the delay in the calendar.
SpaceX’s founder and CEO has more ambitious plans: Musk envisions fleets of spacecraft carrying other people and the infrastructure needed to build a city on Mars.
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