The vehicle Starship of Space traces just as it was returning towards Earth to ditch at the planned point.
Despite this, however, there remains great satisfaction on the part of the project managers, for the fact that they managed to collect data of fundamental importance during the integrated flight test lasting approximately 60 minutes which began today morning, Thursday 14 March . In fact, great reliance is placed on the Starship spaceship project, which should be able to take man to the Moon again and therefore also to Mars.
After the flight test, the Starship should have re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere to land in the waters of the Earth‘Indian Ocean, but probably something went wrong and the aircraft was destroyed. To be precise, contacts with the spacecraft were interrupted at an altitude of 65 km from the landing site, when the two key elements of communication stopped transmitting the signal, namely Starlink, SpaceX’s Internet service, and the TDRSS, the satellite tracking and data transmission system.
“The team reported that the ship was lost, so there will be no ditching today”said Dan Huot, communications manager at SpaceXduring the live broadcast. “But again, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come this time.”. Apparently, however, SpaceX had no intention of recovering the Starship after the flight test: in fact, it was expected that the spacecraft would make a particularly violent landing, so much so as to prevent any possible reuse. The aim was to go further than the tests carried out in 2023 and to collect sufficient data to refine Starship even further for the next missions, and both objectives were achieved: for this reason the engineers speak of a great success of the mission.
The Starship project plans not only to bring humans to Mars for the first time, but was also chosen by NASA to bring its astronauts back to the lunar surface on the mission Artemis IIIwhich is scheduled to take off in September 2026. “Congratulations to SpaceX on the successful test flight! The spacecraft has taken to the skies. Together, we are making great strides through Artemis to return humanity to the Moon, and then look forward to Mars”wrote NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on X.
The Starship vehicle, which includes the Starship upper spacecraft and a rocket known as the Super Heavy, lifted off from the private Starbase launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:25 a.m. local time, which is 2:25 p.m. in Italy. . After pushing the spacecraft up, burning most of its fuel, the thruster Super Heavy it separated from the top of the aircraft – it would have had to make an autonomous landing in the ocean using the remaining fuel, however“he didn’t fire as many engines as we expected and we lost him”, Huot said. This too, however, is a clear improvement compared to previous tests, given that the engine reached higher and did not destroy itself in the air, starting the ditching procedure for the first time.
The CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk, stated that the main purpose of these first test flights was to bring the Starship to speeds sufficient to allow in subsequent tests the spacecraft to enter a stable orbit around the Earth: such a feat requires speeds greater than 17,500 miles per hour (corresponding to approximately 28 thousand kilometers per hour). The vehicle managed to achieve this objective, performing for now “only” a sub-orbital flight for half a lap of our planet, more than sufficient to collect precious data: after burning propellant for six minutes, Starship continued by inertia, carrying out other tests, including that of opening the loading door, a step to be carried out before releasing satellites into space (which in this test however were not present on board).
After 24 minutes of flight, SpaceX also performed what the company calls a“demonstration of propellant transfer in the space”. The goal was to move some of the propellant aboard the Starship vehicle from one tank to another, to understand how the spacecraft could be refueled on future missions while in orbit. The test was then cancelled. The spaceship was in fact on a “rather steep trajectory”, Huot said, meaning that Earth’s gravity would likely have pulled the Starship rapidly toward Earth, regardless of whether the engines were restarted or not.