SpaceX’s third Starship megarocket brought back memories of its epic demise.
Starship unveiled today (March 14) for the third time, blasting off into space from SpaceX’s starbase in South Texas. The giant rover has achieved a number of milestones, including opening its payload door into space and a demonstration of the booster’s movement away from Earth.
Starsend’s upper level failed to make its planned landing in the Indian Ocean, obscuring its fiery descent into Earth’s atmosphere. But the ship kept its cameras on re-entry, showing us just how painful the ordeal was.
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The upper level reached an orbital velocity and maximum altitude of 145 miles (234 kilometers) today, according to telemetry data provided through SpaceX in its launch webcast.
The 50-meter-tall spacecraft sent perspectives of the house from this top position. For example, we saw fluffy white clouds floating above the crystal clear seas and were able to peacefully practice the curved limb of the Earth in the darkness of space. .
But the tone changed about 46 minutes after launch, when Starship had descended to an altitude of about 62 miles (100 km), low enough for the environment to begin to make its presence felt.
The vehicle’s speed cameras showed orange clouds blooming in front of the Starship’s fins and belly. Seconds later, those clouds became a wall of superheated plasma that intensified as the Starship descended lower and lower, experiencing temperatures as high as 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit (1,430 degrees Celsius). ).
It is complicated to transmit information at home through such plasma fields. But Starship has managed to do so, using SpaceX’s Starlink network satellites to communicate with its managers here on Earth, company representatives said.
“Reliable, high-speed, low-latency network around the world, even traveling at 27,000 km/h through a plasma field,” Starlink’s official X account wrote shortly after today’s flight, in an article featuring a video of the re-entry.
Starship continued to send back photographs until about 48. 5 minutes after launch, when it descended to an altitude of 48 miles (77 km). All telemetry ceased a short time later, likely indicating the moment Starship left the ghost, breaking apart under excessive friction. effective.
If you can’t see the SpaceX spacecraft in person, you can create your own model. Measuring 13. 77 inches (35 cm), this is a 1:375 ratio of SpaceX’s spacecraft as a desktop model. The fabrics here are metal alloy and it weighs only 225g.
Note: Stock is low, so it’s a good idea to act fast to get it.
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Today’s test flight is a major step forward for Starship, the 122-meter-tall vehicle that SpaceX is preparing to help humanity establish itself on the Moon and Mars. Starship’s first two test flights, in April 2023 and November 2023, lasted just four minutes and 8 minutes, respectively.
SpaceX will soon advance Starship even further; The company has already built four other giant rockets out of stainless metal.
“These cars are expected to go through long-duration flight tests, like today’s,” Siva Bharadvaj, SpaceX’s space operations engineer, said in the statement’s webcast.
“And in fact, just this week we introduced a static shot on our next spacecraft that plans to fly and we expect the booster to be released as soon as today’s FlightArray launch site is released,” he added.
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Michael Wall is a senior space writer at Space. com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight, and military space, but is known for entering the field of space art. His book about the search for extraterrestrial life, “Out There”, published on November 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph. D. in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a B. A. from the University of Arizona and a Graduate Certificate in Scientific Writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest assignment is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.
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