SpaceX’s final launch and its futuristic Starship’s successful landing
On Wednesday, SpaceX launched and landed its futuristic Starship successfully. It was a final test flight of Elon Musk’s rocketship. With this successful mission, he plans to send people to Mars and land astronauts on the Moon.
The previous four test flights ended with explosions in Texas, near Brownsville.
However, the latest upgraded version of SpaceX that was equipped with full-scale made a successful touchdown.
The launch commentator, John Insprucker, announced that Starbase Flight Control confirmed that they were down and the Starship has landed successfully.
They quickly extinguished the fire at the base of the 50-meter rocket that remained standing after the six-minute flight. Musk later tweeted that the landing was nominal.
This successful mission came on the 60th anniversary of the flight of Alan Shepard – the first American in space.
The choice of NASA is unacceptable for some
Nasa chose SpaceX’s Starship less than a month ago to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface in the following years. However, the $3bn contract was interrupted last week;
Last month Musk said that the Nasa money would help the development of Starship, which they eventually plan to launch atop a Super Heavy booster. He said that it quite an expensive project so far and mainly funded internally. In December, they made the first high-altitude test.
On 23 April, after the private company’s second crew flight, Musk told reporters that the excitement was guaranteed as they had already blown up a few of the starships.
After the touchdown on Wednesday, Starship was still standing tall for a long time.
However, not everyone is happy. NASA selected SpaceX for the lunar landings, which was the sole contractor. It was despite the agency that previously suggested it and would choose more than one. Its competitors, Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, and the defense firm Dynetics filed protests against the U.S. Government Accountability Office contract.
They complained that selecting only SpaceX, which still has technical challenges to solve, was not a good idea.
Blue Origin declared in a statement that NASA executed a faulty acquisition for the Human Landing System program. Yesterday, Blue Origin also announced an auction for its first crewed suborbital launch.
During the investigations of the protests, NASA said late last month that it would suspend SpaceX’s contract, a norm in these situations. However, the chances of overturning the contract are doubtful.
