The Super Heavy booster lands on the company’s launch tower during its fifth Starship flight on October 13, 2024.
SpaceX
SpaceX launched the fifth test flight of its Starship rocket on Sunday and pulled off an impressive first pass with the rocket’s 20-story-tall booster.
This achievement marks a major milestone toward SpaceX’s goal of making Starship a fully reusable rocket system.
Elon MuskThe company launched Starship at 8:25 a.m. ET from its Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas. The reentry rocket’s “Super Heavy” booster landed on the company’s launch tower arm nearly seven minutes after launch.
“Are you kidding me?” SpaceX communications director Dan Huot said on the company’s webcast.
Huot added: “What we just saw looked like magic.
SpaceX captures the first stage “Super Heavy” booster of the Starship rocket on October 13, 2024.
Sergio Flores | Afp | Getty Images
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX in one parcel on social media.
“As we prepare to return to the Moon under Artemis, continued testing will help us prepare for the bold missions ahead,” Nelson wrote.
The Starship separated and continued into space, moving halfway around the Earth before reentering the atmosphere and plunging into the Indian Ocean as intended to complete the test.
There were no people on the fifth Starship flight. Company management said SpaceX is expected to fly hundreds of Starship missions before launching the rocket with any crew.
The full Starship system has made four previous space test flights, with launches in five April And November Last year’s was the same Walk evenly And June. Each test flight achieved more milestones than the last.
SpaceX emphasized that it tries to build “on what we’ve learned from previous flights” in its approach to developing the giant rocket.
SpaceX’s Starship lifted off from Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on October 13, 2024 on the rocket’s fifth test flight.
Sergio Flores | Afp | Getty Images
The Starship system is designed to be completely reusable and aims to be a new way to transport goods and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also vital to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program.
The Federal Aviation Administration has granted SpaceX a license to launch Starship’s fifth flight on Saturday, earlier than the regulator previously estimated. But the company wants to launch its fifth flight earlier than October, prompting both SpaceX and Musk to criticize the FAA, saying “redundant environmental analysis” is hindering the process.
While the FAA and its partner agencies at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Commerce’s National Marine Fisheries Service conducted reviews more quickly than anticipated, SpaceX also had to pay the fine to the environmental management agency about illegal water discharge at the launch site in Texas.
Aim for the fifth flight
SpaceX Starship is seen as it stands on the launch pad before its third test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas on March 12, 2024.
Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images
With the booster’s capture, SpaceX has passed the milestones of its fourth test flight.
The company accomplished its goal of returning the booster to the launch site and using the “chopsticks” on the tower to support the vehicle. The company sees an ambitious approach to capture as crucial to its goal of making rockets fully reusable.
“SpaceX engineers have spent years preparing and months of testing for the enhanced fishing effort, with technicians spending tens of thousands of hours building the engine,” the company writes on its website. infrastructure to maximize our chances of success.”
The company says fishing requires meeting thousands of criteria. If it is not ready, the booster will divert from its reentry trajectory to splash down off the Gulf of Mexico coast.
“We accept no compromise when it comes to ensuring the safety of the public and our team, and reentry will only be possible if the conditions are right,” SpaceX said.
Missile
Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on the Super Heavy booster, Starship is 397 feet tall and approximately 30 feet in diameter.
The super heavy booster, 232 feet tall, is the device that begins the rocket’s journey into space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust – twice the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. first launched in 2022.
The Starship itself, 165 feet tall, has six Raptor engines – three for use while in Earth’s atmosphere and three for operation in the vacuum of space.
The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The entire system requires more than 10 million pounds of fuel for launch.
