Written by Joey Roulette
(Reuters) – SpaceX on its fifth Starship test flight on Sunday returned the rocket’s towering first stage booster to a launch pad in Texas for the first time using giant metal arms, achieving another new engineering feat in the company’s quest to build a reusable moon. Mars rover.
The Super Heavy rocket’s first-stage booster lifted off at 7:25 a.m. Cairo time (1225 GMT) from SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch facilities in Texas, sending the Starship’s second-stage rocket into space before it separated on… The altitude is about 70 kilometers (40 mi). ) to begin its return to Earth.
The Super Heavy rocket relighted three of its 33 engines to slow its rapid descent to the SpaceX launch site, where it targeted the launch tower from which it lifted off. The tower is equipped with two large metal arms.
With its engines roaring, the heavy, 233-foot (71 m) rocket plunged into the arms of the launch tower, holding itself in place by its four front flippers that it used to guide itself through the air.
“The tower caught the missile!!” “Musk wrote on the X after the capture attempt.
The new landing method is the latest advance in SpaceX’s test-to-failure development campaign for a fully reusable rocket designed to lift more cargo into orbit, carry humans to the moon for NASA, and eventually reach Mars — the ultimate destination envisioned by the CEO. Elon Musk.
The US Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday approved SpaceX’s launch license to test Starship, after weeks of tension between the company and the regulator over the pace of launch approvals and fines related to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
Starship, which Musk first unveiled in 2017, has exploded several times in various stages of testing on previous flights, but it successfully completed a full flight in June for the first time. The rocket’s two-stage super-heavy booster blasted off from Texas, sending the second stage – Starship – onto a suborbital trajectory bound for the Indian Ocean about 90 minutes later, delivering a fiery hypersonic return.