Live footage shows SpaceX’s Starship manned rocket prototype successfully landing at its base in Texas, USA today. This is the fifth test of Starship, the previous four having ended in explosions.
The successful landing of Starship means a huge victory for Elon Musk, the CEO of Space Exploration Technologies.
Musk tweeted: “Starship landed as planned!
But the 50-meter-high rocket’s landing wasn’t perfect, as a cluster of flames started at the base after it hit the ground, but were quickly extinguished.
John Insprucker, a webcaster for SpaceX, explained that the rocket uses methane fuel, so a fire is not particularly unusual, and engineers are still working on design issues.
The rocket, numbered SN15, lifted off from its base in Boca Chica, South Texas, at about 5:25 p.m. Texas time, reaching an altitude of about 10 kilometers and completing a series of flight drills.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced that it will use the Starship series as the lunar module in its future human return to the moon program, so SpaceX was under pressure to succeed in today’s test.
NASA announced a $2.9 billion (NT$81 billion) contract with Space Exploration Technologies last month, which has been temporarily suspended because two unselected companies have protested NASA’s decision, namely entrepreneur Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Dynetics, an applied science and information technology company.
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