SpaceX’s SN15 stuck the landing.
“We are down! The Starship has landed,” John Insprucker, SpaceX’s principal integration engineer, said during live commentary.
Today’s uncrewed test came on the 60th anniversary of the United States’ first-ever crewed spaceflight, the suborbital jaunt of NASA astronaut Alan Shepard . The historical parallel is coincidental but appropriate, for SN15’s success marks a big step forward in SpaceX’s plans to help extend humanity’s footprint out into the final frontier.
The stainless-steel SN15 (“Serial No. 15”) lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase test site , near the South Texas village of Boca Chica, today at 6:24 p.m. EST (2224 GMT). The vehicle soared about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) into the sky, performed a number of maneuvers and came back down for a safe touchdown at its designated concrete landing pad six minutes after takeoff.
Related: SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy rocket in pictures
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SpaceX’s Starship SN15 rocket prototype launches on a 10-kilometer test flight from SpaceX’s Starbase test site near Boca Chica Village in South Texas on May 5, 2021. (Image credit: SpaceX)
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Starship SN15 punches a hole through the cloud layer over South Texas during its May 5 launch. (Image credit: SpaceX)
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A view of Starship SN15’s three Raptor engines during its successful test flight. (Image credit: SpaceX)
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A view of Starship Sn15 as it descends back to Earth in a May 5, 2021 test launch and landing. (Image credit: SpaceX)
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SpaceX’s Starship SN15 nears its landing site at the Starbase test site near Boca Chica Village in South Texas during landing on May 5, 2021. (Image credit: SpaceX)
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SpaceX’s Starship Sn15 is seen after a successful landing, with a small fire visible, during a May 5, 2021 test flight in South Texas. (Image credit: SpaceX)
This last bit broke new ground. SN15’s four immediate predecessors all ended up in pieces
One of those vehicles, SN10, seemed to touch down safely to wrap up its March flight, but a fire broke out at its base shortly thereafter and the craft exploded . A fire also licked SN15’s base right after today’s landing, but it was extinguished in relatively short order.
SpaceX learned some lessons from those other rough landings. And SN15 is a bit different than those previous prototypes, too.
“SN15 has vehicle improvements across structures, avionics and software, and the engines that will allow more speed and efficiency throughout production and flight: specifically, a new enhanced avionics suite, updated propellant architecture in the aft skirt, and a new Raptor engine design and configuration,” SpaceX representatives wrote in a description of today’s flight .
SpaceX is developing Starship to take people and cargo to the moon, Mars and other distant destinations. The system consists of two elements, both of which are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable: a spacecraft called Starship and a giant first-stage booster named Super Heavy.
Both of these vehicles will be powered by SpaceX’s next-generation Raptor engine . Starship will have six Raptors, and Super Heavy will sport about 30, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk
Though SN15 is a full-scale Starship prototype in terms of height and width, it features just three Raptors. Future test variants will be more powerful, and we should see these brawnier vehicles fly relatively soon; Musk has said that SpaceX aims to launch a Starship into Earth orbit before the end of the year.
If the test program progresses well, Starship could be up and running not long after that. Musk said recently that he expects the system to be fully operational sometime in 2023
An artist’s illustration of SpaceX’s Starship on the moon. In April 2021, NASA announced that SpaceX had won the contract to build the lunar lander for its Artemis program. (Image credit: SpaceX)
SpaceX already has a Starship mission on the books with a 2023 target launch date — “dearMoon
Starship will also fly NASA astronauts to the moon, if all goes according to plan. The space agency’s Artemis program of lunar exploration recently picked Starship as its crewed moon lander
Artemis
For the past few years, NASA has been working to achieve the first crewed Artemis moon landing by the end of 2024, as directed by the administration of former president Donald Trump. But that timeline is expected to be relaxed under President Joe Biden.
Mike Wall is the author of “ Out There ” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
