Spectacular footage from Starship’s current check launch exhibits the ultimate seconds of the spacecraft’s booster earlier than touching down within the wealthy, blue waters of the Gulf.
SpaceX launched the eleventh check flight of its big Starship rocket on Oct. 12 and achieved all of its targets. The automobile, presently below improvement, consists of its “Ship” higher stage, and the Super Heavy booster, each of that are reusable. Together, they stand practically 400 ft tall (122 meters), although SpaceX plans to launch a taller, upgraded model three (V3) iteration of the automobile shifting ahead.
Starship V2, which launched Monday (Oct. 13) from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, has plagued the corporate over the previous yr of check flights, however Flight Test 11 and its predecessor have redeemed the rocket in its remaining flights. To drive that time house, SpaceX has released video from the booster’s thrilling final moments earlier than it dived into its new house on the backside of the Gulf of Mexico.
Flight Test 11 achieved all of its mission objectives, and SpaceX appeared to have improved points seen on Flight Test 10, which noticed seen structural harm on Ship because the higher stage returned by means of Earth’s environment.
Ship’s descent and gentle touchdown within the Indian Ocean created a image good curtain name to wrap up V2’s remaining flight about an hour after its liftoff, however its Super Heavy booster sang its swan track solely about 6.5 minutes into the mission. This was the second flight of this explicit Super Heavy booster, and solely the second booster to be reflown as a part of SpaceX’s efforts to make Starship utterly reusable.
Starship is the rocket SpaceX envisions will set up a everlasting human presence on Mars — an effort firm CEO Elon Musk estimates will take over a thousand launches, and one reliant on the automobile’s skill to land and launch many times.
NASA has additionally tapped Starship because the lunar lander for the company’s upcoming Artemis 3 mission, which aims to put astronauts’ boots on the moon for the first time since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s. NASA hopes to launch that mission sometime in 2027, putting pressure on SpaceX’s timeline to make Starship operationally ready.
In addition of the soft splashdowns of Ship and Super Heavy, Flight 11’s success included deployment of Starlink mass simulator satellites, a relighting of Ship’s Raptor engines while in space and a new engine burn initiation sequence for Super Heavy during the booster’s deceleration and landing burn.
Both Super Heavy and Ship are designed to return to Starbase for quick turnarounds to reflight, though neither stage did so for this mission. SpaceX has caught Super Heavy three times using giant mechanical arms attached to the rocket’s launch tower, referred to as the “Mechazilla” chopstick arms. The Ship upper stage is also designed to be caught by the launch tower’s arms, though Musk has stated SpaceX’s first attempt to do so will take place in early 2026.