Elon Musk released on Saturday night, the 30th, images of the third Starship test, carried out on March 14th. “It’s the largest flying object ever built,” described the billionaire on his profile on Twitter/X, the platform he owns. With more than 20 satellites, it is “the first spacecraft project capable of making life multiplanetary.”
Weighing 5 thousand tons and measuring 120 meters high, the Starship, designed by SpaceXMusk’s company, is capable of producing 7.5 million kilograms of thrust (force that pushes the aircraft in the opposite direction to the exit of exhaust gases), thus making it the tallest and most powerful rocket system ever built.
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During the third test, the spacecraft lost contact and disintegrated upon re-entering the planet’s atmosphere, instead of gently falling as planned into the Indian Ocean. The total duration of the flight was about an hour. Still, it was celebrated by SpaceX employees and considered successful.
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Earth’s atmosphere
SpaceX tested Starship twice last year — first launching in April and then in November, at its facilities in Boca Chica, Texas.
After this latest static fire test, which saw the rocket reach orbital speed for the first time, Musk revealed that the goal of Starship’s next mission is to “overcome the meteorically extreme heat of re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.”
~3.5 hours later, Falcon 9 launched 23 @Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from pad 40, completing our 260th reflight of an orbital class rocket on the seven-year anniversary of first achieving this feat pic.twitter.com/z29Z89EopY
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 31, 2024
The next launch is scheduled to take place in early May, as announced by SpaceX’s director of operations, Gwynne Shotwell.
According to Shotwell, the first commercial missions of SpaceX’s next-generation rocket will likely involve launching Starlink satellites into orbit, which is expected to occur before the end of the year.
Human colony on Mars and trips to the Moon
SpaceX also has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA to supply Starship rockets for the US space agency’s Artemis program, which aims to return people to the Moon in the coming years.
The agency plans to send two astronauts to the Moon using a version of Starship as a lunar landing vehicle, with the target date no sooner than September 2026.
The last time humans went to the Moon was in 1972, on the Apollo 17 mission. Since then, no crew has traveled beyond low Earth orbit, which means no humans have gone beyond Earth’s orbit around the Moon since.
One of Musk’s goals is to use a fleet of Starships to transport crew and cargo across the Solar System and establish a permanent human colony on Mars.
2024-03-31 13:15:12
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