Elon Musk’s company SpaceX made history today when it successfully caught its Starship rocket booster safely back from space – a feat never before accomplished! This was the fifth test flight of Starship, a fully reusable spacecraft designed to take humans to the Moon and hopefully to Mars as well.
Unlike previous tests where the booster splashed down in an ocean, this time it slowed itself down and descended gently back to the launch pad, where a pair of giant mechanical arms, nicknamed “chopsticks,” caught it.
To grasp the sheer size of this booster, imagine a structure 71 meters tall – that’s roughly the width of a standard soccer field or a 20-storey building! It weighs a staggering 275,000 kgs, equivalent to about 100 Ford Rangers put together.
Now, picture this colossal machine hurtling back to Earth at roughly 27,000 km/h. At that speed, a trip from Harare to Bulawayo, which normally takes around 4 hours, would be over in just one minute!
This is why SpaceX’s achievement is so remarkable. They managed to slow down this behemoth and guide it accurately to a gentle landing. Catching the booster with the mechanical arms is a groundbreaking technique that allows for quicker and more efficient reuse compared to traditional landing methods.
The booster itself is used to carry the rocket to space. In SpaceX’s case it’s carrying Starship. Starship’s objective is to carry cargo into space. Last year Musk said his hope to is finally launches Starlink satellites using the Starship spacecraft. The rocket however has to do test flights before its ready for commercial use. Today was one such.
On the test flight today Starship blasted off its launch pad in Texas USA. The booster separated from the rocket 65km above the earth and started its descent back to the launch pad. The upper part of the rocket travelled around the planet before returning back to earth, splashing down in the Indian Ocean.
Musk has said that his objective is to make humans live and travel between planets easily. He has said his target for the next 20 years is for people to live on Mars without depending on earth for supplies.
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