Wednesday, May 5, 2021

SpaceX Update: Starship SN15 Nails Its Landing on a Historic Day...

Launching aboard a Mercury-Redstone 3 rocket carrying his Freedom 7 capsule, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to fly into space...on May 5, 1961.
NASA

Exactly 60 years after NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to fly into space thanks to his Mercury-Redstone 3 rocket and Freedom 7 capsule, SpaceX made history of its own when it successfully managed to land its Starship Serial No. 15 (SN15) rocket at the company's launch facility in Starbase, Texas...following a flawless 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) hop above the coastline. Unlike the flight of SN10 two months earlier, however, SN15 managed to stay intact long after touchdown—with the vehicle successfully purging its remaining cryogenic fuel and being safed post-landing over the next few hours.

After a successful flight to an altitude of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), Starship SN15 triumphantly sits on its landing pad at SpaceX's launch facility in Starbase, Texas...on May 5, 2021.
SpaceX

With SN15's flawless test flight now in the history books, it remains to be seen if it will fly again, or if it will take its spot near Starhopper at Starbase as currently the only Starship prototypes to survive their aerial demonstrations. Up next is SN16...and if the flight of this vehicle is successful, then that will only prove that NASA made the right choice in selecting Starship as the Human Landing System (HLS) which will take Artemis astronauts to the Moon's surface as soon as 2024 (even though the HLS contract has been put on hold thanks to protests recently filed by fellow HLS contenders Blue Origin and Dynetics against NASA). Once gain, well-done, SN15!






Posted by Richard Par at 7:23 PM
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