SpaceX successfully landed the giant Starship rocket for the first time

On Wednesday, SpaceX launched a prototype of the Starship rocket at high altitude and successfully landed for the first time, setting a milestone in Elon Musk’s mission to build a rocket that flies to the Star. Fire can be completely reused.

CEO Elon Musk said that this prototype SN15 missile has “hundreds of design enhancements” over previous prototypes, all of which were destroyed when attempting to land back on the ground.

Starship SN15 was launched from the Boca Chica facility, Texas. After flying to a height of nearly 10km, the SN15’s three Raptor engines stopped working to begin a horizontal free fall back to Earth. Once close to the ground, the two Raptor engines are reactivated to perform a rather complicated “flip-down” mechanism. The missile reorients itself vertically, before landing on the ground.

The Starship missile unlocks a set of landing legs and lands on a concrete platform a short distance from its launch pad. A small fire erupted near the rocket’s base after a successful landing, but SpaceX engineers said that was not a big deal. So far, the SN15 is the first large-scale Starship missile prototype that can land completely.

Elon Musk immediately tweeted to congratulate the success.

The Starship rocket was designed by SpaceX to send humans and about 100 tons of cargo to the Moon and Mars. The SN15 prototype was as tall as a 16-storey building, but this was only the upper half of the complete Starship. Its lower half will be a “super heavy” booster that will help send missiles to targets as far away as Mars.

This is also a very important success, as SpaceX has won a $ 2.9 billion NASA contract to bring humans back to the Moon in 2024. In this mission, the Starship will be launched. Orbit Earth, refuel and then fly to the Moon. SpaceX will also face another major challenge: landing the Starship on the surface of the Moon.

Reference: theverge