\n SpaceX has wowed audiences during a few prior test flights by steering the Super Heavy rocket booster \u2014 the 232-foot-tall (71-meter-tall) cylinder with all the massive engines that fire at liftoff \u2014 back to a pinpoint landing post-flight.\n <\/p>\n
\n The recovery technique, accomplished for the first time exactly one year ago today, involves the Super Heavy splitting away from the upper Starship spacecraft after expending most of its fuel and guiding itself back toward the launch tower.\n <\/p>\n
\n During three prior test flights, the maneuver has been a success \u2014 with SpaceX\u2019s \u201cMechazilla\u201d launch tower catching the booster mid-air with giant metal \u201cchopsticks\u201d arms as the vehicle uses its engines to slow its descent.\n <\/p>\n
\n In fact, today, SpaceX is reusing one of the boosters it previously recaptured.\n <\/p>\n
\n But the company won\u2019t attempt to recover it again. And SpaceX actually hasn\u2019t attempted a Mechazilla booster landing since March.\n <\/p>\n
\n On its last two flights, the Super Heavy has either exploded or made a controlled landing in the Gulf. That\u2019s in part because SpaceX is intentionally pushing the vehicle to its limits \u2014 trying out different and perhaps more efficient ways to guide the booster home.\n <\/p>\n
\n Today, the goal is to gather crucial bits of data about how the company may land the booster in a scaled-up iteration of the Starship launch system, dubbed Version 3 or V3, that is set to debut next year.\n <\/p>\n
\n For example, Super Heavy will use five instead of three engines during part of its descent burn today.\n <\/p>\n
\n This test could help \u201cadd additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns,\u201d SpaceX said in a statement.\n <\/p>\n
\n The booster will then attempt a \u201cfull hover\u201d above the water using three engines before dropping in, according to the statement.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX has wowed audiences during a few prior test flights by steering the Super Heavy rocket booster \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-198421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}