Thursday 06 May 2021
Elon Musk celebrates
SpaceX rocket finally lands successfully
Elon Musk, president of the company “Nominal Spacecraft”, chants on Twitter: After several failures, the prototype of the future Lunar and Mars spaceship from SpaceX has landed for the first time without incident. The flames can still be seen shortly after landing, but they turn off quickly.
After four failed attempts, a prototype of Starship missile from US company SpaceX successfully landed on Wednesday after a test flight. Shortly after the landing, a video broadcast showed flames at the base of the SN-15 missile, which a SpaceX commentator described as not unusual. SN-15 stands for “Serial Number 15” – four previous models exploded upon landing, some of them staggering.
The fire was quickly extinguished after it had descended. The goal of the tests was a gentle vertical landing of the 50-meter long missile. SpaceX uses desert-like terrain in the US state of Texas for test flights.
The company’s president, Elon Musk, after the missile successfully landed at the test site, tweeted “Nominal Spacecraft”. “We have fallen, the spacecraft has landed,” SpaceX engineer John Insbrucker was quoted by The New York Times as saying.
Musk: The spacecraft missile is soon “safe enough”
Musk, the founder of SpaceX, hopes that the new missile will someday bring people and goods to Mars. In 2023, it should already be used to circumnavigate the moon, which Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa wants to participate in, among other things. On the occasion, Musk recently confirmed that the Starship missile would be “safe enough” to carry people within two years.
NASA also wants to use the Starship rocket for the planned moon landing. It had recently commissioned the private company to develop the first commercial lunar lander, which is supposed to bring two astronauts to the Earth’s satellite. The order is valued at $ 2.89 billion. The United States was the only country to date to have brought twelve astronauts to the moon on the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972.
SpaceX has already proven itself in space travel with the Falcon-9 rocket. In November, it completed its first manned mission to the International Space Station.
