SpaceX's Starship successfully splashed down after its fourth test flight. Elon Musk's company is hoping to use the rocket for a NASA moon mission.
Eleven Madison Park Is Opening a New Bar in N.Y.C. This Fall. Most notably, the spacecraft made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean, a feat that it had yet to accomplish.McLaren’s CEO Reveals That the Automaker Is Working on a Hybrid SUV and an Electric Supercar
This was the first successful reentry for the Starship rocket. The first two test flights, which took place last year, resulted induring its return to Earth. On Thursday, along with the rocket splashing down, the vehicle’s booster similarly landed softly in the Gulf of Mexico.more broadly. NASA is planning to use the craft to return astronauts to the moon during its upcoming Artemis mission.
Personally, Musk is looking to use Starship to make SpaceX an even more productive company. He’s hoping that the 400-foot-tall rocket will help SpaceX launch more satellites for its Starlink internet, send a space station and moon rovers into the cosmos, and even take people to Mars, thenoted. Before any of that can happen, though, SpaceX needs to prove that Starship can carry out its most basic of functions.
This week’s test flight is a reassuring move in that direction. Being able to safely return the spacecraft and the booster is key to making Starship reusable. On Thursday, despite the extreme heat and pressure that worked against the rocket upon reentry, Starship was able to make a controlled landing. Yet, some debris did come off the vehicle, the rocket lost many tiles, and a flap was damaged.
Even still, it’s clear that SpaceX is getting closer and closer to its final goal when it comes to Starship. In just a couple of years, we may get to see a group of astronauts—decked out in—head to the moon via the rocket. And some years after that, perhaps we ourselves will be soaring toward Mars aboard the Starship craft.Tori Latham is a digital staff writer at Robb Report.
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