SpaceX successfully carried out a spectacular maneuver this Sunday: it trapped the booster of its Starship megarocket after a test flight of almost nine minutes, an achievement that could be a decisive step in the reuse of this heavy launcher.
Before the booster called Super Heavy touched the ground as it returned to its launch pad, mechanical arms installed on the tower, nicknamed “the sticks,” closed on the device and immobilized it, according to a video released by the company. billionaire Elon Musk.
Shortly thereafter, the upper part of Starship splashed down in the Indian Ocean, as planned.
“The craft landed precisely on target,” Musk said of the vehicle’s fifth test flight. “Second of the two objectives achieved.”
The successful “capture” of the booster at its Texas launch pad caused company staff to celebrate as well: “Friends, this is a day for the engineering history books,” a Space live broadcast of the company. “The tower caught the rocket,” Musk has published on X.
Takeoff took place at 07:25 (local time) from the SpaceX facilities in south Texas. In June, the company already achieved a safe landing in the Indian Ocean for the first time on another test flight.
The objective was for the two parts of the rocket – the largest and most powerful in the world – to be recovered and reused after each flight, with which SpaceX seeks to be able to launch more rockets, faster and at a lower cost.
Congratulations from NASA
Musk’s company aims use Starship to colonize Mars and the performance of these ships is closely followed by NASA, which congratulated SpaceX for the success of the maneuver and has this program to take its astronauts to the Moon.
The rocket is made up of the phase called Super Heavy, which measures about 70 meters, and above it the Starship ship, totaling 120 meters. “SpaceX engineers spent years preparing for the capture attempt,” the company wrote before launch. “Tens of thousands of hours” were dedicated to “installing the infrastructure necessary to maximize our chances of success,” he continued.
For its part, Starship will continue its flight until landing in the Indian Ocean. The first time it managed to do so successfully was during a test flight four months ago.
SpaceX is developing the Starship at full speed, launching unloaded prototypes to quickly correct any problems that arise in real flight situations. In recent weeks, the company had openly complained about the slowness of the American aviation regulatory body (FAA), in charge of authorizing flights.
“It takes longer to complete the paperwork needed to obtain a license to launch a rocket than it does to design and build the hardware itself,” the company complained in an unusually lengthy press release in September.
Support for Trump
Musk, who supports Republican Donald Trump In the November 5 presidential election in the United States, he had asked the head of the FAA to resign.
SpaceX is also fighting accusations of environmental pollution, especially linked to the deluge of water that is poured during each Starship launch when the engines are turned on, in order to attenuate acoustic waves and thus limit vibrations.
This system was added after the first test flight, in April 2023, destroyed part of the launch pad under the force of takeoff, catapulting debris and a cloud of dust.
Several environmental associations have denounced the damage caused by SpaceX operations to animal species, since the space base is installed right next to a protected reserve.
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