On Wednesday, SpaceX successfully launched and landed its Starship moon and Mars rocket for the first time in Texas.
Liftoff of the rocket prototype, SN15, occurred at 6:25 p.m. EDT at the company’s Starbase spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas, about 23 miles east of Brownsville.
The flight was the fifth for a Starship prototype after all previous ones ended with a fiery explosion. One flight, named SN10 in March, landed upright briefly but exploded minutes later. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has explained that the explosive landings were expected as they are rushing production to have the rocket complete in a certain time frame. Musk has stated that some stages of the flight were not complete, but it was still important to do testing.
The successful flight is part of an “outstanding period as we work to enable the future of human spaceflight and expansion into the solar system,” said SpaceX principal engineer John Insprucker. Just after the landing, Elon Musk posted on Twitter: “Starship landing nominal!”
NASA selected Starship to land astronauts on the moon as part of the planned Artemis missions. SpaceX also has sold a private flight around the moon using Starship to Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, scheduled for early 2023.
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