science<\/p>\n
Super Heavy booster had a super heavy landing, but other reusability tech did the trick<\/p>\n
The 13th flight of SpaceX\u2019s Starship made it off the launchpad on Friday and ticked off just about everything on the company\u2019s to-do list.<\/p>\n
After delays and engine replacements<\/a>, Elon Musk\u2019s colosso-launcher took to the skies at beer-o\u2019clock on Friday evening \u2013 5:51PM Texas time.<\/p>\n One hour, five minutes and 21 seconds later, Starship made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean, where it floated after landing.<\/p>\n SpaceX says it was able to gather critical data on the performance of Starship\u2019s heatshield, and that the craft made \u201ca dynamic banking move to mimic the trajectory that future missions returning to Starbase will fly.\u201d<\/p>\n Gathering data on Starship\u2019s heatshield performance will help SpaceX ensure the craft is re-usable. Simulating missions that land at Starbase, SpaceX\u2019s Texas home, builds toward future missions that launch and land at the same facility, speeding turnarounds for re-usable hardware.<\/p>\n The test flight also saw SpaceX test a new routine for de-orbiting the Super Heavy booster used to hoist Starship into space. \u201cThe booster successfully completed the high thrust portion of the boostback burn with all 33 engines, the first time with a Super Heavy V3, before ending the burn early,\u201d SpaceX said. \u201cIt attempted to relight its engines for the landing burn, with a subset successfully igniting before experiencing a hard splashdown in the Gulf.\u201d<\/p>\n That part of the mission didn\u2019t go perfectly, as SpaceX hoped for a softer landing and more engines lighting to make it possible.<\/p>\n Once Super Heavy and Starship separated, the latter vehicle used its six Raptor engines to reach desired speed and orbit. It then deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites. SpaceX crew verified the sats worked and half a dozen of them got a look at Starship\u2019s heatshield. While the satellites were functional, SpaceX did not intend them to form part of the Starlink constellation and allowed them to re-enter Earth\u2019s atmosphere. Or as the company\u2019s mission report<\/a> put it, the satellites \u201cdemised upon reentry approximately 20 minutes after deployment.\u201d<\/p>\n Starship performed one more trick on its way back to Earth, by starting one of its Raptor engines while coasting through space. The success of that test again demonstrated tech that will be needed for future missions, in this case flights that push Starship into sustainable orbit \u2013 or allow it to reach a trajectory capable of reaching the Moon, as NASA envisages will be the case for future Artemis missions that land humans on Earth\u2019s permanent natural satellite.<\/p>\n SpaceX boss Elon Musk said he hopes the next Starship test flight will see the Super Heavy booster caught by robot arms at Starbase, another step towards improved reusability and turnaround times between flights. \u00ae<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"science Super Heavy booster had a super heavy landing, but other reusability tech did the trick The 13th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-569993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}