Two weeks ago, NASA selected a SpaceX spacecraft – the Starship – to take astronauts to the moon later this decade.
Yesterday, the company demonstrated that an unmanned prototype can safely land itself (watch above).
“We are down, the Starship has landed,” said John Insprucker, a SpaceX engineer, after the prototype, SN15, settled onto a landing pad in South Texas.
A previous test ended in flames, although SpaceX has successfully landed a version of the ship before.
On Wednesday, the SN15 soared six miles above the earth’s surface. It then deftly maneuvered into sideways position – called a “belly flop” – before righting itself and touching down without incident.
CNN explains what makes the landing so unique:
Musk first explained Starship’s intended landing method during a September 2019 media event. He billed it as a unique maneuver that would see the rocket dive back through the air with its belly pointed toward the Earth as its four fins shift slightly to keep it steady. It’s a maneuver that Musk said is intended to mimic how a skydiver would fall through the air, rather than the straight vertical descent to Earth that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets employ when they come in for landings.
Perfecting the belly-flop landing maneuver is essential to “enable a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration, interplanetary flights and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond,” according to the company’s website.
SpaceX is owned by colorful entrepreneur Elon Musk. The company’s success on Wednesday is likely to irk fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos. The Wall Street Journal explains:
The experimental Starship design underpins the recent $2.9 billion NASA contract win by SpaceX to provide a lunar lander for astronauts later in the decade. The two losing bidders, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin LLC and Leidos Holdings Inc., filed official protests over the award which they said was driven in part by lack of funding to hire more than one contractor.
Bezos’s Blue Origin announced yesterday that it will launch its New Shepard spacecraft on July 20. The ship will be crewed and a spot is being reserved for the winner of an online auction.