SpaceX SN15 starship prototype comes in for a successful landing for the first time |
The feat marked a key milestone for the private rocket
company of billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk in its development of a resusable
heavy-lift launch vehicle to eventually carry astronauts and large cargo
payloads to the moon and Mars.
The Starship SN15 blasted off from the SpaceX launch site in
Boca Chica, Texas, along the Gulf Coast and reached its planned maximum
altitude of 10 kilometers (6 miles), then hovered momentarily before flying
nose-down under aerodynamic control back toward Earth.
Maneuvering itself back into vertical position under rocket
thrust as it approached the ground, the 16-story, three-engine vehicle
descended to a gentle touchdown on its landing gear.
"We are down, the Starship has landed," SpaceX
principal integration engineer John Insprucker said during live commentary for
the flight.
A video feed of the landing showed flames continuing to burn
at the base of the rocket after the engines cut off, but an automated
fire-suppression system trained a steady stream of water onto the landing pad,
eventually extinguishing the blaze.
The flight came on the 60th anniversary of the first
spaceflight by an American astronaut - Alan Shepard's launch on a 15-minute
suborbital mission atop NASA's Mercury-Redstone rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Musk declared success on Twitter, posting a terse message in
the understated parlance of spaceflight: "Starship landing nominal!"
Four previous test flights of Starship prototypes - SN8 in
December, SN9 in February and SN10 and SN11 in March - all blasted off
successfully but blew to pieces.
The complete Starship rocket, which will stand 394 feet (120
meters) tall when mated with its super-heavy first-stage booster, is SpaceX's
next-generation launch vehicle at the center of Musk's ambitions to make human
space travel more affordable and routine.
A first orbital Starship flight is planned for year's end.
Musk has said he intends to fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the
moon with the Starship in 2023.
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