SOUTH PADRE ISLAND (Texas, USA), June 6 SpaceX announced the successful completion of a test flight of the spacecraft Starship, it made a “controlled” splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
“Confirmed touching water,” the company announced on the social network X, congratulating all Starship developers on the fourth flight.
As the owner of the company, Elon Musk, in turn wrote in X, “despite the loss of many parts of the skin and damage to the tailgate, Starship passed all the tests until the soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean,” wrote Musk, congratulating the entire SpaceX team.
The Starship test flight lasted just over an hour and was broadcast almost entirely live, with video images transmitted by Starlink satellites.
The main purpose of today's test was to test the ability of the rocket booster and the ship itself to carry out a controlled return to Earth and splashdown. To do this, when Starship was several kilometers from the surface of the water, it carried out several maneuvers, took a vertical position and only then entered the water. At this stage, the company did not plan to preserve the ship or its first stage, which successfully “landed” in the Gulf of Mexico shortly after launch, but plans to implement such a task in the future.
SpaceX is building the most powerful Starship ship for future long-distance space flights. The first test launch of the ship took place in April last year and ended in an accident shortly after launch. The second test launch was carried out in November 2023, but soon after the successful separation of the stages, the ship collapsed before reaching orbit. During the third launch in March of this year, the ship was able to reach space, but was destroyed upon re-entry.
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