- SpaceX’s Starship rocket successfully caught by mechanical arms during its return
- Super Heavy booster safely landed, advancing reusability goals
- NASA partnership aims for Moon landings by 2026 with Starship
Elon Musk’s Starship rocket has achieved a world record after some of it was caught during its return to the launch pad.
As part of its initial test flight, the SpaceX vehicle’s lower half maneuvered back beside its launch tower and became entangled in a massive set of mechanical arms.
It advances SpaceX’s goal of producing a fully reusable and rapidly deployable rocket.
“A day for the history books,” SpaceX engineers said as the rocket safely landed.
It seems unlikely that the bottom component of the rocket, known as the Super Heavy booster, would be caught so cleanly on the first attempt.
Before the flight, the SpaceX crew said they would not be surprised if the booster was guided to land in the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX can now boast remarkable accomplishments in the previous two test missions. This comes less than a year after its first flight when the vehicle was blasted apart shortly after launch.
SpaceX claims that these failures are part of its development strategy: launch early in anticipation of failure so that it may collect as much data as possible and develop its technologies faster than competitors.
The first stages of the fifth test were similar to the previous one, with the Ship and booster separating two and three-quarter minutes after leaving the ground.
At this point, the booster began to return to the launch site at Boca Chica in Texas.
With only two minutes to land, it was unclear whether the attempt would be made as the team controlling the tower performed final checks.
When the flight director gave the go-ahead, SpaceX staff at mission control reacted with cheers.
The company stated that thousands of conditions must be completed before the effort can be undertaken.
As the Super Heavy booster re-entered the atmosphere, its 33 raptor engines labored to slow it down from speeds of over a few thousand miles per hour.
When it neared the landing tower, which is 146 meters (480 feet) tall, it appeared to float; orange flames consumed the booster, and it skilfully fitted into the gigantic mechanical arms.
After detaching from the booster, the rocket’s Ship, which houses equipment and personnel for future flights, powered up its engines.
It was successfully landed in the Indian Ocean around forty minutes later.
“The Ship landed precisely on target! Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, wrote on X that the second of the two objectives had been achieved.
Not only was the Ship successfully landed, but SpaceX could also maintain some of the vehicle’s hardware, which they had not anticipated.
Catching the booster rather than having it land on the launch pad lowers the requirement for complex ground systems and allows for fast reuse of the vehicle in the future.
Elon Musk and SpaceX envision the rocket system taking humanity to the Moon and ultimately to Mars, transforming our species into a “multi-planetary” species.
The US space agency, Nasa, will be pleased that the journey went as planned. It has paid the business $2.8 billion (£2.14 billion) to build Starship into a lander capable of returning astronauts to the Moon’s surface by 2026.
In space terms, it is close. Therefore, Elon Musk’s crew was keen to relaunch the rocket immediately.
However, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the US government authority that licenses all flights, had previously stated that there would be no launch before November as it assessed the company’s permissions.
Since last month, the agency and Elon Musk have been at odds after the FAA said it was attempting to punish his business, SpaceX, $633,000 for allegedly failing to meet its license requirements and getting permits for earlier flights.
Before obtaining a license, the FAA evaluates the flight’s impact, particularly on the environment.
Musk promised to sue the EPA in response to the penalties. SpaceX issued a public blog post defending itself against “false reporting” that a portion of the rocket was damaging the environment.
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Currently, the FAA only examines the immediate environmental impact of rocket launches rather than the long-term effects of pollutants.
Dr. Eloise Marais, professor of atmospheric chemistry and air quality at University College London, stated that while rocket carbon emissions pale in contrast to other modes of transportation, other planet-warming pollutants are not being considered.
“Black carbon is one of the most serious issues. The Starship rocket runs on liquid methane. “It’s a relatively new propellant, and we don’t have excellent data on the amount of emissions from liquid methane,” she explained.
Dr. Marais stated that the discharge of black carbon from rockets is particularly worrying since it travels hundreds of miles higher into the atmosphere than planes, which can remain much longer.
