SpaceX managed to land its prototype Starship missile at its base in Texas without blowing it up on Wednesday. He succeeded in doing this for the first time in five attempts.
The test flight is a big win for the persistent company that ultimately wants to transport the crew for missions to Mars in Starship.
« Spaceship nominally lands! » Founder Elon Musk tweeted triumphantly after the last four attempts ended in large explosions.
The execution was not entirely perfect, as shortly after landing a small fire engulfed the base of the 50-meter-high rocket named SN15. </ SpaceX webcaster John Insprucker said this was "not uncommon with the methane fuel we used," adding that the engineers were still working on design issues.
Previously, the rocket launched around 5:25 p.m. local time ( 2225 GMT) from the star base in Boca Chica, south Texas, reached an altitude of 10 kilometers and performed a series of maneuvers, including a horizontal descent a « belly flop ».
SpaceX was exposed to additional pressure with successful on Wednesday after NASA announced last month that it would use a version of Starship as a lunar lander when the space agency brings people back to the moon t.
The $ 2.9 billion contract is currently on hold after two rival companies, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Dynetics, protested.
However, if the award is confirmed at some point, it will they are turning Starship from Musk’s favorite project into a large, taxpayer-funded corporation, with all the controls that come with it.
The first two flight tests of Starship, SN8 and SN9, landed and exploded when they took off in December and February, respectively.
The video feed that was cut off during the test flight of the fourth, SN11, and Musk later confirmed that it too exploded, this time in mid-flight.
Finally, SpaceX is planning to launch the Starship starship with one Combining Super Heavy rocket to create a fully reusable system that will allow us to penetrate deep into our solar system.
This final version will be 120 meters high and will launch 100 tons into Earth orbit rdern – the most powerful launcher ever developed.
Musk would like to use this to realize his goal of transforming humanity into a multiplanetary species with a colony on Mars.
The planned lunar version of Starship, however, would serve a more modest goal – dock at a future lunar orbital station, collect astronauts, and then put them on the moon.
To get the astronauts to the lunar station in the first place, NASA has a more traditional plan in mind: It uses its own huge SLS missile with a crew capsule attached called the Orion.
But the SLS missile has suffered severe delays and cost overruns, and observers have pondered whether Starship could succeed. This could one day make SLS redundant.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and published from a syndicated feed.)
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