SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket achieved its first drop during a test flight Thursday, in a major milestone for the prototype system that could one day send humans to Mars.
Pieces of fiery debris flew from the spacecraft as it descended over the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia, dramatic on-board camera video showed, but the craft eventually held on and survived atmospheric re-entry.
Super Heavy has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico pic.twitter.com/hIY3Gkq57k
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 6, 2024
“Despite the loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship managed to make a soft landing in the ocean!” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote to X.
“Today was a great day for the future of humanity as a space civilization!” he added.
The most powerful rocket ever built took off from the company’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, at 7:50 a.m. (1250 GMT) before soaring into space and flying halfway across the globe for a journey that lasted about six hours minutes .
With its fully reusable design, Starship is essential to fulfilling Musk’s ambitious vision of colonizing the Red Planet and turning humanity into a multiplanetary species.
Meanwhile, NASA has contracted a modified version of Starship to act as the final vehicle to take astronauts to the surface of the Moon under the Artemis program later this decade.
A trial-and-error approach
Three previous test flights had ended in the destruction of the Starship, all part of what the company says is an acceptable price in its rapid trial-and-error approach to development.
“The payload for these flight tests is data,” SpaceX told X, a mantra repeated by the commentary team during the flight.
The next challenge is to develop “a fully and immediately reusable orbital heat shield,” Musk said, promising further tests to learn how to make the Starship better able to withstand falling through the atmosphere at about 27,000 kilometers per hour (almost 17 000 mph).
About seven and a half minutes after liftoff, the first booster stage, called Super Heavy, managed to land upright in the Gulf of Mexico, to huge cheers from engineers at Mission Control in Hawthorne, California.
The cheers grew even louder in the final minutes of the flight. Ground crews screamed and yelled as the top glowed a fiery red, the result of a plasma field generated by the friction of the vehicle piercing the atmosphere.
Space fans around the world watched in awe, thanks to a live feed powered by SpaceX’s vast Starlink constellation of internet satellites.
Some of the flying debris even cracked the camera lens, but the Starship ended up getting stuck on landing.
“Congratulations to SpaceX on the successful Starship test flight this morning!” NASA chief Bill Nelson wrote on X. “We’re one step closer to returning humanity to the Moon via #Artemis – then we look ahead to Mars.”
Starship Takeoff! pic.twitter.com/2Z1PdNPYPG
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 6, 2024
Twice as powerful as the Apollo rocket
The Starship is 397 feet (121 meters) tall with the two stages combined – 90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty.
Its Super Heavy booster produces 16.7 million pounds (74.3 meganewtons) of thrust, about twice as powerful as the Saturn V rockets used during the Apollo missions, and later versions should be even more powerful.
SpaceX’s strategy of conducting tests in the real world rather than in labs has paid off in the past.
Its Falcon 9 rockets have become workhorses for NASA and the commercial sector, its Dragon capsule sends astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, and its Starlink Internet satellite constellation now covers dozens of countries.
But the clock is ticking for SpaceX to be ready for NASA’s planned return of astronauts to the moon in 2026.
To do this, SpaceX would first have to put a primary Starship into orbit, then use multiple “Starship tankers” to fill it with supercooled fuel for the onward journey—a complex engineering feat that has never been accomplished before. .
China is planning its own manned lunar mission in 2030 and has recently had a better track record than the United States in meeting its timetables.
© Agence France-Presse
