Towards the Moon, and even further: towards Mars. Starship is the rocket designed and built by Space NASA’s Artemis mission by 2026, and then in the future also the Red Planet. Today, June 6, at 2.50 pm (Italian time) in TexasElon Musk’s company started the fourth test of what is the largest rocket ever built.
The goal this time is reach orbit, to understand if the rocket is ready to return to Earth and then be reused. The journey should therefore end with a landing – or rather, a ditching – in the Gulf of Mexico of the booster and a controlled return of the spacecraft, which is expected to conclude its journey in the Indian Ocean. The first part of the test was completed successfully. Three minutes after launch, the boosters it successfully separated from the spacecraft to begin its descent. Then the detachment of the first stage, called the “hot stage” to reduce the mass. Finally the ditching, in the Gulf of Mexico. There spacecraft instead it continued its journey to reach orbit. Then she made her return, in ‘Indian Ocean, one hour after launch. “To achieve this goal, several software and hardware updates have been made to increase overall reliability and address lessons learned” from previous launches, it is written on the Spacefalling into the atmosphere, at twenty times the speed of sound, leads to extreme thermal stresses. A shield made up of 18 thousand hexagonal ceramic plates will have to protect the stainless steel structure from temperatures that can reach 1,430 degrees centigrade.
Presented in 2022 by Elon Musk himself, Starship is a 122 meter giant built with the aim of transform the human species into a “multiplanetary” species. To use Musk’s own rhetoric. It definitely is the largest rocket ever built. Consisting of the spacecraft Starship SN20 and from the booster Super Heavy, is designed not only to be reusable but to be quickly reusable. Within 6/8 hours of arrival, it should be ready to leave for space. And it will be able to complete a vertical landing where it was launched. This allows us to reduce the costs of space exploration.
This is the fourth test flight that Space X conducts on Starship. The first three missions gradually improved performance. The first test, in April 2023, was aborted after four minutes because the rocket’s two stages had not separated as required. The separation was obtained instead at second attempt (November 2023): The flight lasted eight minutes. In March 2024 the third test, which lasted 50 minutes and ended with the breakup of the Starship spacecraft upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Now a new goal, re-entry into the atmosphere. The next test, the fifth, will be dedicated to landing.
