esterday Elon Musk’s company SpaceX launched the giant Starship rocket for the sixth time from Texas, in order to further develop the Space X Starship's
capabilities. During the flight test, the Starship featured some issues and wasn’t able to land in the same location as the departure place.
The rocket design is about 400-foot-tall and is specially created to be able to land safely on the moon and also transport the Space X Starship’s crew to Mars. This Space X Starship launch test was planned to depart from Boca Chica, Texas at 4. pm CT.
In its design, the ship features a first-stage booster that is 233-foot-tall, called Super Heavy, that Tuesday detached from Starship at about 40 miles in altitude in an attempt to send it to space. But contrary to expectations, the Super Heavy part has crash-landed in the water of the Gulf of Mexico. Superheavy was planned initially to land in the large mechanical arms attached directly to the Space X Starship launch tower. But it seems that something failed during this test flight, and Superheavy ended up in the water.
According to a separate livestream, Elon Musk’s Space X Superheavy has exploded and transformed into a giant fireball after its crash land.
This event was so unexpected due to the fact that last month Elon Musk’s Space X Starhip demonstrated a successful catch-landing for the first time. But for this recent Tuesday test, Elon Musk declared on social media that is planned to feature a faster catch-landing.
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However, the rest of this SpaceX Starship mission seemed to be a successful one. Starship managed to travel around the Earth before performing a daytime splashdown in the Indian Ocean about an hour later.
During its around the Earth flight, Sparship successfully reignited one of the onboard engines in space for the first time. This represents a milestone in the Starship operability because this reignition was previously attempted in other test flights but it was not achieved.
"We just passed 400 launches on Falcon, and I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years,", the SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell stated at the Baron Investment Conference.
By
George King
•
November 20, 2024 7:00 PM
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