New York \u2013 SpaceX\u2019s Starship on Friday sailed through its first test flight since the company went public.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarship is intact, floating in the ocean and transmitting telemetry!\u201d company head Elon Musk said on X.<\/p>\n
The ship serenely splashed into the Indian Ocean to wild cheers from SpaceX employees, who were watching live footage from the company\u2019s Starbase.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m losing my mind right now,\u201d spokesperson Dan Huot said on the livestream. \u201cThis is the first time we\u2019ve put an intact Starship in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a dream scenario for the team that\u2019s trying to get this heat shield data.\u201d<\/p>\n
The flight aims were similar to those of a mostly successful voyage carried out in May, which debuted the latest edition of the powerful Starship, its third-generation model.<\/p>\n
The primary goals of this 13th test launch were to once again demonstrate those redesigns in flight, this time without any hiccups.<\/p>\n
The upper stage deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites, a test SpaceX said \u201cwill provide critical data as we prepare to expand our Starlink constellation\u201d of the company\u2019s satellite internet service.<\/p>\n
The approximately one-hour flight also tested upgrades to the mammoth ship\u2019s heat shield.<\/p>\n
The company had said after its May test that it had made \u201cseveral modifications to hardware and software to address issues seen on the previous flight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The landing burn of the booster was still a bit harder than the company hoped.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust looking at the booster real quick, it didn\u2019t look like we lit all 13 engines that we were planning for that initial land and burn,\u201d said Huot.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were targeting a softer splash on it, and as you saw, it came in with quite a bit of velocity.\u201d<\/p>\n
A previous attempt at launch was abruptly scrubbed just as the booster began to ignite, in an automatic stoppage that occurred after some engines did not start.<\/p>\n
The launch was then further delayed over weather and visibility concerns.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s flight was the first after Musk\u2019s SpaceX went public on Wall Street in June, with a record initial public offering.<\/p>\n
The rocket company has rapidly expanded its satellite internet service and voiced lofty ambitions for AI data centers in space.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot riding on SpaceX\u2019s progress: The company is under contract with NASA to produce a modified version of Starship to serve as a lunar landing system.<\/p>\n
Sharing an image of the Starship rocket passing the Moon, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman commented that \u201cpretty clear from this shot that SpaceX knows where we are going!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Starship comes online, its capabilities will be game-changing, not least of which will be ensuring we never give up the Moon again!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York \u2013 SpaceX\u2019s Starship on Friday sailed through its first test flight since the company went public.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2335,8,458,14567,5436,260],"class_list":["post-63597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-elon-musk","tag-japan","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-stocks","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}