SpaceX manages to land the Starship rocket propellant, a feat long pursued by Elon Musk’s company (WITH VIDEO)
In the test launch of the Starship spacecraft carried out this Sunday, the fifth so far, the North American company SpaceX managed to meet two objectives considered crucial to reducing the cost of travel in space.
The aerospace company owned by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, managed to get the ship’s propellant, called Super Heavy, back to base after launch, so that it could be reused. And it successfully achieved the objective of making the spacecraft land, in a controlled manner, in the Indian Ocean, according to CNN Brasil.
The launch of the spacecraft and re-entry to Earth took place this Sunday, October 13, without a crew on board, from the Boca Chica air base, in Texas, USA. At 7:25 am local (1:25 pm Lisbon), the spacecraft took off. As soon as it overcame the atmospheric barrier, the propellant began its journey back to dry land, where it had to arrive intact in order to be used in future launches.
According to the New York Timesthe Super Heavy, a propellant with 33 engines, upon separating from the ship, correctly followed the trajectory back to the launch tower, successfully fitting into the “arms” of the structure. The Starship, in turn, fell into the Indian Ocean and exploded, as predicted.
Musk marked the feat on the social network X (formerly Twitter), which he also owns.
This fifth test of Starship, which weighs around 5000 tons, managed to place the module into orbit and test a system that uses the Starlink communication system to, for the first time, maintain communication with the orbital module during reentry, something that no space flight has achieved so far.
Starship aims to be the first private service to reach the Moon and Mars and establish permanent presences and colonies on these planets, a vision repeated and considered viable by its founder, tycoon Elon Musk.
The process by which Starship’s propellant managed to land this Sunday for the first time is similar to that of the Falcon 9 rocket, also from SpaceX, a much smaller commercial orbit launch system, designed, in general, for missions in Earth orbit with a success rate greater than 95%.
