Elon Musk‘s SpaceX is now preparing to catch the booster of its ambitious Starship launch vehicle at Starbase during the next launch rather than having it splash down in the Gulf of Mexico like last time.
What Happened: During Starship’s last flight test in early June, the two stages of the vehicle- the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster- separated and the booster subsequently had a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
The spacecraft ignited its engines and went into space, made a controlled re-entry to Earth, and had a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The entire flight lasted one hour and six minutes from launch. The key object of the flight was to re-enter Earth and the mission achieved it while withstanding damage to the vehicle.
The goal for the next test flight, however, is to catch the booster back at Starbase using the launch tower’s mechanical arms.
SpaceX on Thursday posted a short video of the team at Starbase testing the launch tower to see if it is capable of catching the booster after stage separation. The video shows the tower’s “chopstick” arms trying to hold a section of the booster, reminding the company CEO of The Karate Kid franchise.
“It's basically just Karate Kid at scale,” Musk wrote about the video with a laughing emoji.
Why It Matters: "I think we should try to catch the booster with the mechazilla arms next flight!" Musk wrote after the fourth flight test, hinting that on the next flight, the company would attempt to land the booster back at the Starbase launch tower instead of splashing it down into the Gulf of Mexico in what would be a significant demonstration of its reusability.
“Returning the booster after launch is a core capability to Starship becoming rapidly and reliably reusable,” SpaceX said on Thursday.
SpaceX’s Falcon rocket is about 80% reusable, and the company is currently looking to ensure full reusability for its Starship rocket. Reuse of rockets, the company believes, is integral to bringing down the costs of spaceflight as the most cost is taken up in building the launch vehicle.
Starship is touted as the world’s most powerful launch vehicle, standing 121 meters tall and weighing approximately 5,000 tonnes. SpaceX is expected to have at least six test flights of the Starship this year, as per CEO Elon Musk‘s latest estimate from March.
NASA is currently relying on the success of Starship to land humans back on the moon as part of its Artemis program. The last crewed lunar mission occurred in 1972 with Apollo 17. Since then, no crew has traveled beyond low-Earth orbit.
Photo courtesy: Shutterstock
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