(CNN) – SpaceX successfully launched its latest test flight Starship – the fifth from 2023-, is the most powerful rocket system ever built and could one day be used to take humans to the Moon and Mars.
The superheavy rocket’s liftoff occurred at 8:25 a.m. ET (7:25 a.m. CT), during a 30-minute launch that opened at 8 a.m. from SpaceX Starbase in Boca Chica. Texas.
For the first time, the demonstration mission involved an ambitious attempt to maneuver a 71-meter-tall booster rocket into a giant landing structure after the starship separated from the upper spacecraft after consuming most of its fuel. The superheavy was successfully grabbed in midair with a pair of large metal clamps, which SpaceX calls “chopsticks.”
SpaceX’s “chopsticks,” or large metal tongs, recapture the rocket as it returns to Earth. (Credit: SpaceX)
Meanwhile, the starship continued its own journey using its six internal engines before practicing a landing maneuver in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX does not expect to recover the upper spacecraft.
The goal of each milestone is how SpaceX can one day rapidly recover and reuse superheavy rockets and Starship spacecraft for future missions. Rapid reuse of rocket parts is seen as essential to SpaceX’s goal of dramatically reducing the time and cost of delivering cargo — or ships carrying people — to Earth orbit and deep space.
Ultimately, SpaceX plans to use the Starship capsule as a lander to carry NASA astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2026 as part of the Artemis III mission, and the company has contracts worth nearly US$4 billion. task. Eventually, SpaceX hopes the Starship will put the first humans on Mars.
Starship development has so far focused on a series of increasingly complex test flights, which began in 2019 with brief jump tests of a vehicle “Star Hopper” It initially rose a few centimeters above the ground. More recently, the company has moved to bolder releases of a fully stacked starship capsule and a super-heavy booster.
He First test launch of a Starship and a Super HeavyCalled the Integrated Test Flight, it took place in April 2023. The sole purpose of this launch was to remove the 121 meter vehicle from the launch pad. It exploded minutes before take off over the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX has been known to embrace setbacks in the early stages of spacecraft development, saying that these failures help the company quickly implement design changes that lead to better results.
The company’s goals have become more ambitious with each new launch.
The latest test launch, the fourth in SpaceX’s integrated test flight campaign, began in June. Both the booster and the spacecraft, despite showing a badly burned and wobbly wing during the Internet broadcast, re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and practiced landing maneuvers at sea, representing a significant step forward.
SpaceX took its test further by recovering the Super Heavy rocket after launch.
Eventually, SpaceX plans to recover and reuse both the superheavy and the starship. But recovering rockets is a natural first step, as SpaceX has extensive experience in this field.
Landing booster rockets after flight is a feat accomplished by SpaceX with its smallest rocket, the Falcon 9. Boosters have been recovered from the rocket on several occasions. That rocket’s boosters have soft-landed on sea or land platforms after more than 330 launches, allowing them to refit and fly again. SpaceX says it has kept costs down, allowing it to offer lower prices than other rocket markets.
However, the starship is a very powerful and complex system.
At its core are 33 engines, each more powerful than one of the nine engines used in the Falcon, providing about 10 times more thrust when the superheavy rocket lifts off.
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Watch SpaceX catch a Starship rocket on its fifth test flight
Instead of attaching the landing legs to the side of the Superheavy, as adorns the Falcon 9’s booster, SpaceX has developed a special turret to support the Superheavy’s return to dry land, which it hopes will further speed up the recovery process.
Tower, nicknamed “MegacillaElon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, resembles a metal Godzilla because it has massive metal arms. Arms or “sticks” can be used to stack boosters and shuttles on the launch pad before takeoff, and are designed to catch airborne vehicles during their return to Earth.
Musk’s vision is that in the future, a rocket could be repositioned on the launch pad within minutes of the stick weapons return, allowing the vehicle to take off again 30 minutes after landing, he said. Interview On June 5.
It’s a bold vision. And SpaceX is in the early stages of working out exactly how capture works.
At one point Musk agreed Interview SpaceX posted on YouTube in July that SpaceX’s goal for the flight “sounds crazy,” though “it has a good chance of working.”
“We haven’t broken the physics, so success is one of the possible outcomes here,” he said.
SpaceX built the Super Heavy Booster “to meet thousands of different vehicle and platform criteria,” according to the company’s website, which required “healthy systems in the booster and turret and manual ordering by the mission flight director.”
Had the attempt been aborted, the Superheavy would have retried its sea landing maneuver.
The attempt occurred seven minutes after launch, while the Starship spaceship spent nearly an hour at sea before making its controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
One problem the shuttle encountered during its fourth test flight in June was the loss of heat shield plates, or thousands of small black hexagons attached to the exterior of the shuttle, during re-entry. According to Musk, the loss of a large number of these plates greatly affected the vehicle’s ability to attempt a soft landing.
“Because of the loss of the flaps… the front lobes were so melted it was like trying to control them with little skeleton hands,” Musk said, as the fourth plane landed in the ocean about 9.7 kilometers from its planned landing pad. .
The company said on its website that it “conducted a complete review of its heat shield, in which SpaceX technicians invested more than 12,000 hours, replacing the entire heat shield system with sophisticated plates. Reinforcement between the aileron structures and additional safeguards.”
This will help the starship better survive the rigors of re-entry.
The success of the aircraft would prompt the company to undertake more ambitious projects. For example, SpaceX had to figure out how to refuel a starship while it was parked in orbit. This maneuver was necessary to provide a large vehicle with enough propulsion to make the trip to the Moon.
If the agency fails to meet its goals or sustains significant damage to its launch facilities, it could raise questions about additional delays to NASA’s lunar ambitions.
Artemis, NASA’s flagship human spaceflight program, aims to put astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program 50 years ago.
The Space Agency has already warned that the Starship development timeline could push back the goal of landing the first crew on the lunar surface in 2026.
