SpaceX Rocket Make Historic Splashdown In Gulf Of Mexico
SpaceX has reached one of its major milestone. The massive Starship rocket achieved its first ever splashdown during a test flight on Thursday. Fiery debris came off flying from the spaceship as it descended over the Gulf of Mexico, as shown in the dramatic video from an onboard camera. The spaceship ultimately held together and survived the atmospheric re-entry.
Taking to X (formerly twitter), Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, said that despite loss of “many tiles and damaged flap”, the Starship made a soft landing in the ocean. He called the day, a great day for the humanity’s future as a spacefaring civilization.
The rocket, most powerful be ever built, blasted off from the company’s Starbase in Boca Chica, situated at Texas, before soaring high to space and coasting halfway across the globe. Its journey lasted for about an hour and six minutes.
Super Heavy has splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico pic.twitter.com/hIY3Gkq57k
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 6, 2024
The spaceship was built in a fully reusable design. The Starship is essential in fulfilling Musk’s ambitious vision of making mankind a multiplanetary species by colonizing Mars.
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At the same time, NASA has contracted a modified version of Starship to act as the final vehicle that will take the astronauts to the surface of Moon under the Artemis programme later this year.
This is the fourth attempt of Starship; three previous attempts have ended up in destruction, which the company says is an acceptable cost in its rapid trial-and-error approach to development. SpaceX said that the “payload for these flight tests is data.”
Musk said the next challenge for the company is to develop a “fully and immediately reusable orbit heat shield.” He said that further tests will be done to learn how to make Starship better withstand zooming into the atmosphere around 27,000 kilometers per hour.
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NASA chief Bill Nelson congratulated the successful test flight of Starship. Taking to X, he wrote, “Congratulation SpaceX on Starship’s successful test flight this morning…we are another step closer to returning humanity to the Moon through #Artemis – ten looking onward to Mars”.
The Starship is 397 feet (121 meters) tall, which is 90 feet taller than America’s Statue of Liberty. The Super Heavy booster produces 16.7 million pounds (74.3 Meganewtons) of thrust, which is about twice as powerful as the Saturn V rocket used during the Apollo missions.
