Repeatedly postponed since the summer of 2022, the event that all space fans have been waiting for has finally taken place: Thursday, April 20, the Starship, SpaceX’s mega-rocket, took off from the Boca Chica base (Texas), for its first orbital flight. Placed on a kind of take-off table, the 120-meter-tall launcher left the ground shortly after 3:30 p.m. The rocket exploded in flight three minutes later. Monday, April 17, a first attempt had been canceled a quarter of an hour before the fateful hour for a pressurization problem.
The rocket designed by Elon Musk’s company consists of two elements: a first stage called Super Heavy equipped with 33 engines operating simultaneously (unheard of in space) and a second element of 50 meters, often called Starship and equipped with fins. This is supposed to eventually transport cargo or humans, which would make it the largest habitable ship ever designed.
In theory, these two parts of the rocket are capable of landing. The originality of the Super Heavy is that, without “feet”, it must return exactly to its starting table and be caught in flight by two arms that equip the huge launch tower of the Boca Chica base. As for the Starship, after descending in a prone position in the atmosphere, it recovers vertically and brakes just before reaching the ground. A maneuver that, out of five attempts, SpaceX has only carried out once, in May 2021. The other four landing attempts ended in an explosion and the destruction of the Starship. It should be noted that this one, during these five tests, was never put into orbit and never even really approached space, contenting itself with climbing to an altitude of ten kilometers.
Despite their ability to land, for this first orbital flight neither of the two elements of the rocket was supposed to land on the ground and both had to fall back into the ocean. The Super Heavy in the Atlantic off Texas and the Starship in the Pacific, not far from Hawaii, after completing a virtual circumnavigation of the Earth in an hour and a half.