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After orbital flight, the device fell into the Indian Ocean
Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched its Starship rocket for the first time. Report DW.
Musk’s Starship super-heavy rocket made its first orbital flight and returned to Earth. NASA announced the next steps in returning humans to the moon.
After three unsuccessful attempts, the US aerospace company SpaceX successfully tested the most powerful and heaviest rocket in history, the Starship. On Thursday, June 6, about an hour after orbiting, the rocket entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 25,000 kilometers per hour and fell into the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia.
The rocket was launched from Starbase in South Texas, and a few minutes after liftoff, the prototype Super Heavy first stage successfully landed in the Gulf of Mexico. The flight was broadcast live on the Internet. “Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the exciting fourth test flight of Starship!” – wrote Elon Musk’s company on the social network X.
NASA also congratulated the company on its “successful flight.” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said: “We are one step closer to returning humans to the moon.”
Previous Starship Launches
In the future, it is planned to use such spacecraft to carry people to the moon and Mars. In the first three launches, the Starship rocket was destroyed by explosions. Previously, the third test flight of the Starship rocket was carried out in mid-March, but it ended with the vehicle deviating from its course.
The Starship was launched from the private Starbase spaceport in the southern United States, and the two stages separated successfully at an altitude of 73 kilometers. It was originally planned that the super-heavy aircraft carrier would then softly land in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, but the first stage failed to land successfully. The second stage continued to fly for about an hour and entered low-Earth orbit. According to SpaceX, the rocket is capable of rising to an altitude of more than 200 kilometers.
Two previous attempts to launch Starship in April and November 2023 ended in failure. In the first test, the rocket failed to separate after three minutes of flight and exploded. During the second launch, the stages were able to separate but exploded shortly afterwards.
Starship is the largest rocket in human history
Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket in human history. As SpaceX itself reports, the ship will be able to transport people and cargo to low-Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars. The total system design capacity is 150 tons. The reusable Starship system consists of a 70-meter-long Super Heavy first stage and a 50-meter Starship spacecraft with additional engines.
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