Elon Musk’s Starship Test Flight 10 rises from the ashes

For those rocket watchers out there, it’s been a great day for SpaceX’s Starship program, with it nailing all milestones on Test Flight 10. Designed for colonising the moon and Mars, Elon Musk’s Starship program has suffered three terrible previous test flights, none of which were able to complete their programs. Flight 10’s long list of successes include:

• Successful launch of the Superheavy booster
• Successful hot-stage separation of the booster (lower half) and Starship (top half)
• Successful return of the Superheavy booster to its landing point in the Gulf of America
• Successful deployment of Starship’s dummy payload, consisting of 8 mock-satellites
• Successful relighting of one of Starship’s Raptor engines in space to prove returning from orbit
• Successful re-entry of the Starship through the earth’s atmosphere and testing of heat tiles
• Successful Starship landing on target in the Indian Ocean, near the west coast of Australia

However, there were a few tense moments including one of the booster’s raptor engines flaming out during launch, and some type of damage to the aft section and at least one aft flap of Starship during the critical re-entry phase. Also, no booster catch attempt was part of the plan for this launch. Thankfully, none of these issues stopped the progress of Test Flight 10, resulting in loads of useful data, and is a testament to the engineering skills of the SpaceX team.

The post Elon Musk’s Starship Test Flight 10 rises from the ashes appeared first on GadgetGuy.

About admin

This is a short description in the author block about the author. You edit it by entering text in the "Biographical Info" field in the user admin panel.