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“Starship” falls into the Indian Ocean intact more than an hour after being released into the atmosphere.
- Starsheet is one of SpaceX and Elon Musk’s ambitions to send cargo and people to the Moon and Mars
The spacecraft continued to emit a signal longer than it did on its third test flight last March. SpaceX also sent a command to Starship to reignite its engines before landing, in a maneuver aimed at slowing it down and redirecting it. On the company’s live feed, the engines appeared to reignite, but it was unclear how smoothly this maneuver was.
The biggest goal
Keeping the spacecraft in good condition after penetrating the atmosphere is SpaceX’s biggest goal before this test flight.
Plan Elon Musk Starship will eventually be put into regular commercial service as a reusable rocket, but it will still be a long time before humans can make flights to outer space on board. This would require landing the spacecraft intact, providing life support systems, and means of refueling in space.
A few minutes after the launch of the flight, the “Super Heavy” booster rocket that propelled the spacecraft into orbit separated as planned, and returned again to Earth. The booster rocket then fired its engines one last time to slow its impact before landing safely in the Gulf of Mexico, achieving a new achievement, sparking cheers inside the SpaceX mission control center.
Musk’s ambitions
One of the company’s and Musk’s main ambitions is to use SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which is billed as the most powerful rocket ever built, to send goods and people to destinations like the Moon, and then on to Mars.
Depending on how satisfied SpaceX is with Thursday’s mission, it is possible that the company will move forward with trying to land parts of Starship on Earth during the next test flight.
“If the virtual tower landing with the booster is successful, we will practically experience a fifth flight to land on the tower,” Musk told employees at the Starbase facility in Texas in April.
“This is a timeline that’s very much aimed at success, but it’s still subject to contingency,” Musk added.
Starship is about 400 feet (122 meters) long, longer than the Saturn V rocket that carried Neil Armstrong to the moon. SpaceX has a multibillion-dollar contract with NASA to land people on the moon using Starship. NASA is closely monitoring SpaceX’s progress with each Starship launch, with the goal of landing astronauts on the moon as early as 2026. However, that timeline is likely to be delayed.
SpaceX was not planning to recover Starship or its Super Heavy booster on this flight. It was not immediately clear whether the Federal Aviation Administration would open an investigation into Thursday’s mission, as the US agency has done in the past when the Starship vehicle crashed or caused damage. However, the FAA identified before the flight several potential outcomes that would not lead to an investigation into the incident, and the flight appears to meet the standards set by the FAA.
An FAA spokesman said it was evaluating the operation and would update the public later on whether an investigation was necessary.
SpaceX has been able to gradually improve with each successive Starship test launch. During the first two flights – in April 2023 and in November – the vehicle exploded early, before it could perform most of the mission’s objectives.
For SpaceX, these test flights are all part of the Starship development process, as the company does not necessarily expect completely successful launches, but hopes to expand the horizons with each new mission it launches.