“Starship landing nominal!” Musk tweeted about seven minutes after SN15’s touchdown.
A prototype of SpaceX's Starship spacecraft is seen at the company's Texas launch facility on September 28, 2019 in Boca Chica near Brownsville, Texas. The Starship spacecraft is a massive vehicle meant to take people to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. (Photo: Loren Elliott/Getty Images/AFP)
After four unsuccessful attempts, Elon Musk-run SpaceX successfully managed to land its high-altitude Starship prototype rocket, intended to use to land astronauts on the moon and send people to Mars, for the first time on Wednesday.
All four previous high-altitude prototypes exploded upon attempting to land — either on, shortly before, or moments after the touchdown.
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“Starship landing nominal!” Musk tweeted about seven minutes after SN15’s touchdown.
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Musk has said the SN15 rocket contained “hundreds of design improvements” over past high-altitude prototypes, which were all destroyed during explosive landing attempts.
Starship SN15 lifted off at 6:24 PM ET from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas facilities, soaring more than 6 miles in the sky to test in-flight maneuvers, The Verge reported.
As it reached peak altitude, SN15’s three Raptor engines gradually shut down to begin a horizontal free-fall back to Earth. Nearing land, two engines reignited to execute a complex “landing flip maneuver”, where the rocket reorients/repositions itself vertically ahead of a soft touchdown, the report said.
SpaceX’s Starship system is made for sending humans and up to 100 tons of cargo to the Moon and Mars.
The 16-story-tall high-altitude prototypes like SN15 represent just the top half of Starship. The bottom half will be a towering “super-heavy” booster that will help launch Starship’s top half before returning back to land.
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