On May 5, SpaceX’s Starship prototype SN15 flew to an altitude of 10 kilometers before landing safely. (Screenshot from SpaceX live video)
On Wednesday (May 5), the 60th anniversary of the first U.S. manned space flight, SpaceX’s Starship prototype SN15 successfully challenged a 10-kilometer altitude test flight before finally landing safely.
The Starship vehicle, if successfully finalized, will likely first carry Japanese entrepreneur Tomosaku Maezawa and several artists on a lunar orbit called “Dear Moon” in 2023. Then, it may serve as a lunar module to realize the Artemis Project, the U.S. plan to go to the moon again.
SN15 took off from the Boca Chica test site at 6:24 p.m. EDT on May 5, and the flight procedure was the same as the previous one. It started with three Raptor engines firing together, shutting down two engines in sequence two minutes after liftoff, and flying to an altitude of 10 kilometers four minutes later, shutting down the last engine. Then the rocket flipped to horizontal and descended freely, maintaining the flight attitude through the control wing. at 5 minutes and 40 seconds, the 2 engines were started, restored to vertical, slowed down and landed slowly.
On May 5, the SpaceX Starship prototype SN15 flew to an altitude of 10 km and then landed safely. (Screenshot of SpaceX live video)
However, after landing, there was still an open fire near the engine that had not been extinguished. There was only one remote fire hose at the landing site, spraying water underneath the SN15 to keep the flames much smaller. The live host was nervous and did not immediately announce the success of the test flight and waited a while before announcing it. It was four minutes after landing before SpaceX turned off the live broadcast.
In the past five months, SN15’s four previous attempts (SN8, 9, 10, 11) have failed. One of them, SN10, returned to the landing site, but the engine thrust was abnormal and the rocket hit the ground hard, causing another fire and explosion after a fuel leak from a ruptured pipe, and ultimately failed.
This time, the test flight landing phase of the ignition, the engine flame is normal, the rocket is also very stable landing, indicating that SpaceX has overcome the final level of ignition instability problem.
On May 5, the SpaceX Starship prototype SN15 landed safely after flying to an altitude of 10 km. (Screenshot from SpaceX live video)
NASA announced on April 16 that the Human Lunar Landing System (HLS) project in the Artemis program was won by SpaceX’s Starship. However, two other contenders – Dynetics and Blue Origin – objected and the decision was temporarily put on hold.
The project was competed by SpaceX, Dynetics and a “national team” led by Blue Origin. SpaceX’s offer was the lowest, at $2.94 billion, Blue Origin’s offer was the middle, and Dynetics’ offer was the most expensive.
SpaceX’s proposal is a customized version of a starship that could visit the moon. If unmanned testing is successful, the starship would send the first astronauts to the moon as early as the mid-2020s. This would be more than 50 years since NASA’s last mission to the moon in 1972, when a human walked on the moon again.
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