Spectacular footage from Starship’s recent test launch shows the final seconds of the spacecraft’s booster before touching down in the rich, blue waters of the Gulf.
SpaceX launched the 11th test flight of its giant Starship rocket on Oct. 12 and achieved all of its objectives. The vehicle, currently under development, consists of its “Ship” upper stage, and the Super Heavy booster, both of which are reusable. Together, they stand nearly 400 feet tall (122 meters), though SpaceX plans to launch a taller, upgraded version three (V3) iteration of the vehicle moving forward.
Starship V2, which launched Monday (Oct. 13) from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, has plagued the company over the past year of test flights, but Flight Test 11 and its predecessor have redeemed the rocket in its final flights. To drive that point home, SpaceX has released video from the booster’s thrilling last moments before it dived into its new home at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Flight Test 11 achieved all of its mission goals, and SpaceX seemed to have improved issues seen on Flight Test 10, which saw visible structural damage on Ship as the upper stage returned through Earth’s atmosphere.
Ship’s descent and soft landing in the Indian Ocean created a picture perfect curtain call to wrap up V2’s final flight about an hour after its liftoff, but its Super Heavy booster sang its swan song only about 6.5 minutes into the mission. This was the second flight of this particular Super Heavy booster, and only the second booster to be reflown as part of SpaceX’s efforts to make Starship completely reusable.
Starship is the rocket SpaceX envisions will establish a permanent human presence on Mars — an effort company CEO Elon Musk estimates will take over a thousand launches, and one reliant on the vehicle’s ability to land and launch again and again.
NASA has also tapped Starship as the lunar lander for the agency’s upcoming Artemis 3 mission, which aims to put astronauts’ boots on the moon for the first time since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s. NASA hopes to launch that mission sometime in 2027, putting pressure on SpaceX’s timeline to make Starship operationally ready.
In addition of the soft splashdowns of Ship and Super Heavy, Flight 11’s success included deployment of Starlink mass simulator satellites, a relighting of Ship’s Raptor engines while in space and a new engine burn initiation sequence for Super Heavy during the booster’s deceleration and landing burn.
Both Super Heavy and Ship are designed to return to Starbase for quick turnarounds to reflight, though neither stage did so for this mission. SpaceX has caught Super Heavy three times using giant mechanical arms attached to the rocket’s launch tower, referred to as the “Mechazilla” chopstick arms. The Ship upper stage is also designed to be caught by the launch tower’s arms, though Musk has stated SpaceX’s first attempt to do so will take place in early 2026.
First Appeared on
Source link
