SpaceX made history again with the fifth test flight of Starship, the craft designed to return humanity to the Moon and, later, Mars. The goal was to capture the Super Heavy B12 – the launcher’s first stage – in the air and land it on the launch pad. Something that doesn’t even happen in science fiction movies.
On October 13, 2024, at 7:25 a.m., at the spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas, the scene was impressive. The first rays of the dawn sun painted the sky an orange tone as the Starship S30 spacecraft and the Super Heavy B12 stood on the launch pad. The countdown reaches zero without delay. “Excitement is guaranteed,” SpaceX presenters recounted. At that moment, the massive launcher’s 33 Raptor 3 engines ignited, and two seconds later, the rocket began its ascent.
The sensations were different from those of previous flights; it seemed that SpaceX had learned lessons from the large amount of data collected on previous missions. In the latest test, the company successfully performed a hot separation of the Starship and successfully maneuvered the launch vehicle’s first stage for an impressive vertical landing in the Gulf of Mexico. This time, however, the goal was to return the first stage not only to the Boca Chica Starbase, but directly to the launch pad.
And so it was. The Raptor engines worked perfectly. During the fall controlled by “small” thrusters, the structure of the huge rocket is used to increase aerodynamic resistance and reduce speed. After 6 minutes of flight, we saw the Super Heavy breaking through the few clouds that covered the Texas sky. From that moment on, everything is history.
Catch a 200 ton rocket
At more than 3,000 km/h, the rocket became visible to the thousands of spectators who witnessed the launch on site. At times it sounded like a missile heading towards the starbase. At 1 km altitude, 13 of the 33 Raptor engines restarted. The three main engines were responsible for the final approach to the platform, capable of directing the Super Heavy towards the enormous platform. It even seemed easy to “catch up” with what we call chopsticks a rocket weighing more than 200 tons.
Meanwhile, the Starship was heading more than 100 km above sea level toward the other side of the planet, where SpaceX planned to test the vehicle’s maneuverability with a landing in the Indian Ocean, with no intention of recovering its structure. . There was great anticipation as to how the company resolved the heat shield issues seen on the previous flight. Elon Musk said after the fourth flight:
“We are going to replace the entire heat shield on the ship. “The new heat shield tile is about twice as strong as the one from the fourth flight.”
Since then, modifications to the shield have attracted great interest.
Heat Shield Improvements
The Starship Shield is made up of over 18,000 tiles (tiles), most of them hexagonal, which protect the structure from the high temperatures reached during re-entry.
One of the main novelties of this flight was the incorporation of an ablative material under the ceramic tiles that surround the structure. This material absorbs heat as it degrades, thus protecting the vessel in the event of rupture.
Incorporating joints between tiles to prevent plasma penetration during re-entry was also essential. In addition, as Elon Musk pointed out, both the system for assembling the tiles to the structure and their external resistance have been reinforced by new coatings about which little is yet known.
The Starship successfully achieved its goal. SpaceX’s live broadcast, conducted on its own Starlink network, wowed viewers around the world. The heat shield demonstrated improved response to high thermal loads during re-entry, with attention focused on the flaps of the vehicle.
On the previous flight, these flaps They had suffered significant damage due to the degradation of the shield and, moreover, they are essential to control the attitude of the ship and reorient it vertically a few meters from the surface.
The engines were restarted at 1h05 of the flight, achieving an impressive landing on the water’s surface.
The goal was to hit the target and SpaceX achieved it. At the same landing site, a company camera awaited the arrival of the Starship.
SpaceX continues to experience success. A few weeks ago, the company made history with the manned flight of the Polaris Dawn mission aboard the Dragon capsule. Launched with the Falcon 9, the Dragon capsule went further than ever and left us with spectacular images of the first commercial spacewalk with new EVA suits.
Moreover, Elon Musk has already announced the date of the first launch of not one, but five Starship unmanned spacecraft to Mars. This will be during the next launch window which opens in 2026, when the Red Planet will be in its closest position to Earth.
Without a doubt, this is only the beginning of a long saga of borderline science that goes beyond fiction.
David González-Bárcena He is a doctoral assistant professor at the Department of Fluid Mechanics and Aerospace Propulsion at ETSIAE and a researcher at the University Institute of Microgravity “Ignacio da Riva”, Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM).
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
