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SpaceX’s giant Starship on Thursday successfully completed its fourth test flight despite a dramatic last-minute hitch when parts of the rocket’s flap began to crumble on re-entry.
The upper stage of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever launched, was able to execute a controlled re-entry to splash down in the Indian Ocean as planned.
The latest flight’s success marks a significant step forward for billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who aims to build a spacecraft capable of carrying humans and cargo to the Moon and beyond.
Starship’s development could herald a second revolution in the exploitation and exploration of space after SpaceX’s Falcon launcher significantly lowered transport costs.
In its first reusable iteration, Starship is expected to be able to carry as much as 150 tonnes into low Earth orbit, more than twice the capacity of Falcon 9.
Nasa is also relying on Starship to land humans on the Moon as part of the US space agency’s Artemis programme. Starship’s fourth mission came on the same day that Boeing’s much-delayed rival, Starliner, delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station on its first crewed flight test.
On his social media platform X, Musk declared that “despite . . . a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean! Congratulations SpaceX team on an epic achievement!!”
The 121m rocket lifted off from its launch pad at the company’s Starbase in Boca Chica, southern Texas at 7.50am local time on Thursday, carrying 10mn pounds of propellant. Powered by 32 of its 33 Raptor engines, the stage known as the “super heavy booster” separated less than three minutes after take-off and at an altitude of about 70km before splashing down successfully in the Gulf of Mexico.
The upper stage — known simply as “ship” and which could eventually transport Nasa astronauts to the Moon — continued its flight to a peak altitude of more than 200km above Earth. About 49 minutes after launch, it began to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere, the point near which the previous test flight failed and where temperatures can reach 1,400C, according to SpaceX.
At about 56km above Earth, one of the flaps that helps orient the ship and is crucial to the manoeuvre required for a soft landing began to break apart. Nevertheless, the flap continued to operate as parts broke off, and the ship splashed down in the Indian Ocean as planned roughly one hour and six minutes after launch.
After Starship’s previous flight failed in March at an altitude of about 65km, SpaceX said it had made several hardware and software changes to achieve its goal of safe return for its two stages.
Starship’s last launch had completed almost an hour of flight before it was lost. Two previous test flights in 2023 had ended in explosions.
Future test flights will attempt to prove that the stages can be reused, as with Falcon 9. SpaceX is aiming to launch at least three more test flights in the next few months.
Congratulating SpaceX on the flight, Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said on X: “We are another step closer to returning humanity to the Moon through Artemis — then looking onward to Mars!”
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