Elon Musk’s spacecraft company made history by successfully landing a rocket on Earth on Sunday 13th of October 2024, making this test the most successful of all five flight tests. The 397-foot-tall rocket took off from SpaceX star base in Boca Chica, Texas at 7:25am EDT.
This is the fifth test for Starship; the fourth test happened in June and was damaged by extreme temperature upon its re-entry to Earth. This led to multiple upgrades and improvements to ensure a better landing for the rocket’s fifth test flight.
To detach the Starship from the Super Heavy Booster, the SpaceX team did something called “most engines cut off” instead of “main engines cut off”. This procedure left 3 engine raptors to ignite the super booster. While this was going on the main engine tower was deciding and giving a Go or No Go command to the landing of the Super Booster on Boca Chica, Texas.
The Super Booster lands safely on a robotic arm called Chopstick for it safely lands on the launch tower after traveling at a supersonic speed. Kate Price a system engineer at SpaceX describes this landing as a day for the history book saying “This is a day for the engineering history book”. The staff of SpaceX were cheering at the moment of landing.
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The other part of the ship landed successfully in the Indian Ocean around forty minutes after the Super Booster. Elon Musk wrote on X “Ship landed precisely on target! Second of the objective achieved.”
The objective of the fight test according to SpaceX was to look at controlled re-entry to Earth. Not only did the Ship land at the planned position it also didn’t lose or damage its hardware.
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Conclusion
This launch is not just a win for space engineers and astronauts but for the human race as a whole,. It further proves we are one step closer to being a multi-planetary spice. If you want to learn more about spaceships, space travel, research, and, innovation visit SpaceX’s website.
