{"id":641510,"date":"2024-10-13T20:35:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-13T17:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/spacex-successfully-catches-returning-starship-booster\/"},"modified":"2024-10-13T20:35:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T17:35:00","slug":"spacex-successfully-catches-returning-starship-booster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/spacex-successfully-catches-returning-starship-booster\/","title":{"rendered":"#SpaceX successfully catches returning Starship booster"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For the first time, SpaceX not only launched its mammoth Starship, but also returned the booster to the launch site and to caught it with a pair of oversized \u201cchopsticks.\u201d<\/p>\n

This test flight \u2014 the fifth in the Starship development program \u2014 took place Sunday morning at the company\u2019s Starbase site in southeast Texas. The nearly 400-foot-tall Starship is at the centerpiece of SpaceX\u2019s stated ambition to make life multi-planetary, but more immedia<\/a>tely NASA\u2019s ambitious Artemis campaign to return humans to the surface of the moon.<\/p>\n

SpaceX envisions rapid reuse of the entire Starship vehicle, which includes an upper stage (also called Starship) and a Super Heavy booster \u2014 but that means proving out the capability to recover both stages and quickly refurbish them for future flights.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So it makes sense that the primary objectives for this fifth flight test were two-fold: attempting the first-ever \u201ccatch\u201d of the Super Heavy booster at the launch site and an on-target Starship reentry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n

The latter goal had already been achieved: SpaceX nailed a controlled reentry and splashdown of the Starship upper stage during the last test mission in June. But the booster catch, as the company put it in a blog post, would be \u201csingularly novel\u201d in the history of rocketry.<\/p>\n

The closest analogue is the now-routine Falcon 9 booster landings on autonomous barges and terrestrial landing zones. In today\u2019s launch, the booster slowed to a hover and gently positioned itself inside the zone of two \u201cchopstick\u201d arms attached to the launch tower. Those arms then closed around the booster and hold it up after its engines stop firing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You can see the catch at around 40 minutes into SpaceX\u2019s video of the test<\/a>. Following the booster detachment and catch, Starship continued to ascend into orbit before splashing in the Indian Ocean and exploding (SpaceX had not planned to recover the spacecraft).<\/p>\n

SpaceX noted in an update posted on its website<\/a> that \u201cthousands\u201d of criteria showing healthy systems across the vehicle and pad had to be met for the catch attempt to occur. This test also took place a little sooner than expected: the Federal Aviation Administration had previously said that it did not anticipate issuing a modified launch license for this test before late November.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That timeline gave much umbrage to SpaceX, leading the company to repeatedly call out what it characterized as the regulator\u2019s inefficiency. But the FAA announced on Saturday that it had app<\/a>roved the launch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements for the suborbital test flight,\u201d the regulator said in a statement. Notably, the authorization also includes approval for the next test flight, given that \u201cthe changes requested by SpaceX for Flight 6 are within the scope of what has been previously analyazed,\u201d the FAA said.<\/p>\n

While awaiting this launch license, SpaceX engineers have stayed very busy: in recent months, they have conducted numerous tests on the launch tower, completely replaced the rocket\u2019s entire thermal protection system with newer tiles and a backup ablative layer, and updated the ship\u2019s software for reentry. This week, engineers completed propellant loading tests and testing of the launch pad\u2019s water deluge system, which is meant to protect the pad from the powerful fire of the booster\u2019s 33 Raptor engines.<\/p>\n

The company eventually plans on bringing the Starship upper stage back to the landing site too, though we\u2019ll have to wait to see that in future test launches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWith each flight building on the learnings from the last, testing improvements in hardware and operations across every facet of Starship, we\u2019re on the verge of demonstrating techniques fundamental to Starship\u2019s fully and rapidly reusable design,\u201d the company says. \u201cBy continuing to push our hardware in a flight environment, and doing so as safely and frequently as possible, we\u2019ll rapidly bring Starship online and revolutionize humanity\u2019s ability to access space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anthony Ha contributed to this report, which has been updated to reflect the successful test flight.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time, SpaceX not only launched its mammoth Starship, but also returned the booster to the launch site and to caught it with a pair of oversized \u201cchopsticks.\u201d This test flight \u2014 the fifth in the Starship development program \u2014 took place Sunday morning at the company\u2019s Starbase site in southeast Texas. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":641511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/spacex-starship.jpg?resize=1200,549","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[5019,70678,152329],"class_list":["post-641510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-starships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}