Written by Joey Roulette
(Reuters) – SpaceX on its fifth Starship test flight on Sunday returned the rocket's first upper stage back to its launch pad in Texas for the first time using the machine's giant arms, achieving another engineering breakthrough in the company's push to build a reusable moon. The car of Mars.
The first stage of the “Super Heavy” rocket lifted off at 7:25 a.m. CT (1225 GMT) from SpaceX's Boca Chica, Texas, launch facility, sending the Starship second-stage rocket into space before it separated at an altitude of about 70 kilometers ( 40 miles). ) to begin its return to earth – the most daring part of the test flight.
The Super Heavy booster re-ignited its 33 Raptor engines to slow its rapid descent back to SpaceX's launch pad, as it headed toward the launch pad and tower from which it exploded. The tower, which is more than 400 meters taller than the Statue of Liberty, is topped by two large iron arms.
With its engines roaring, the 233-foot-tall (71 meters) Super Heavy booster fell into the tower's closed arms, anchoring itself in place with thin bars, protruding beneath the four wings of the forward grid that it used to steer itself in the air.
“The tower is holding a rocket!!” CEO Elon Musk wrote to X after the attempt to catch up. SpaceX engineers watching the company's live broadcast applauded.
The novel fishing technique marked the latest progress in SpaceX's test-to-failure development campaign for a fully reusable rocket designed to carry large amounts of cargo into orbit, transport humans to the moon for NASA and eventually reach Mars – the last place Musk saw. .
Meanwhile, Starship, the rocket system's second stage or upper part, cruised at about 17,000 miles per hour 89 miles up in space, headed for the Indian Ocean near western Australia to demonstrate about 90 minutes of controlled flight.
As the Starship re-enters Earth's atmosphere horizontally, on-board cameras show a smooth, pink-purple color of superheated plasma covering the side of the ship facing Earth and its two rudders, a massive hypersonic collision reflected in the glowing aura.
The hot side of the ship is coated with 18,000 heat-insulating tiles that have been developed since SpaceX's last test in June, when the Starship completed a full test flight to the Indian Ocean but suffered tile damage that made its re-entry difficult.
The Starship this time proved to be incomplete when it re-ignited one of its six Raptor engines to stabilize itself in a simulated sea landing.
A live broadcast from SpaceX showed the rocket touching down in the night water off the coast of Australia, then rolling onto its side, ending its test mission.
A separate camera view of the spacecraft near touchdown then showed the spacecraft bursting into flames, as SpaceX engineers could be heard on the live stream shouting in celebration. It was not clear whether the blast was a controlled detonation or the result of a fuel leak.
Musk said the ship landed “right on target!”
The Starship, first unveiled by Musk in 2017, has exploded several times in various stages of testing in previous flights, but successfully completed a full flight in June for the first time.
The US Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday approved SpaceX's fifth test launch license, following weeks of disagreements between the company and its regulator over the pace of launch approvals and fines related to SpaceX's workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9.
