There are now four launches that SpaceX’s Starship has carried out. In the first, Super Heavy never separated from Starship. The operation failed, the rocket It began to spin uncontrollably and self-destructed. after four minutes of flight. By then, 8 of its 33 Raptor engines had stopped working.
During the second, the two-stage separation system worked, but the flight did not last 9 minutes. After separation, Super Heavy had to use 13 of its engines to continue the flight and make a controlled landing in the Gulf of Mexico.
However, several of those engines went out until “an engine failed energetically, which quickly led to a rapid unscheduled disintegration of the booster. The disintegration of the vehicle occurred more than three and a half minutes after launch at an altitude of 90 km over the Gulf of Mexico,” explained SpaceX .
The third, finally, made a planned journey of almost one orbit around the planet. Despite this, she did not survive the harsh conditions of her re-entry to Earth. Something that did get the fourth pitch.
The Super Heavy managed to land for the first time. The propellant was successfully stabilized and had no problems with the oxygen supply to the engines, as had happened on two occasions due to blockages in the filters.
Once this was overcome, Elon Musk He already has his mind set on that fifth pitch that, as he stated through his official X account, will take place at the end of July. One of the objectives of all this is to use the Starship to take us back to the moon through the Artemis II mission.
Mechazilla, the great protagonist
One of the novelties that this fifth flight will include is the presence of Mechazilla, a gigantic rocket catching machine and whose structure must hold the Starship during its return landing, something that requires great precision and difficulty.
In the previous launch, the Super Heavy managed to land in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Pacific Ocean. However, What we intend now is to land on solid ground. Mechazilla will be in charge of catching the rocket on its descent to place it back on the platform and install a new first stage.
