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Science & Tech.
Mahesh

15/10/24 09:24 AM IST

SpaceX ‘catching’ Starship booster

In News
  • A pair of giant robotic arms caught the more than 70-metre-long first stage booster of SpaceX’s Starship, bringing Elon Musk’s company a step closer to its goal of building a fully and rapidly reusable rocket system.
Starship
  • Starship is a two-stage heavy lift vehicle comprising a booster (called Super Heavy), and an upper section (the Starship spacecraft).
  • Together, the rocket system is nearly 120 metres tall, making it the largest rocket ever — taller than even the Saturn V (111 metres), which took Neil Armstrong to the Moon.
  • For perspective, the Qutab Minar is 72.5 m tall, roughly the length of the first stage booster that was caught on Sunday.
  • Starship is designed to carry crew or/ and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond, and once fully operational, can revolutionise space travel.
Significance of the mission
  • Most rocket systems are expendable, meaning they can be used only once.
  • This makes rocket launches quite costly and time-consuming. For decades, engineers have attempted to devise reusable space vehicles — but with limited success.
  • SpaceX is the latest space organisation to want to transcend the limitations of expendable rocket systems, by creating a system that is fully and rapidly reusable.
  • Catching the Super Heavy is a milestone to this end. In future, the company hopes it will be able to rapidly stack a Starship spacecraft back on top of the landed booster, allowing the rocket to launch again, almost immediately.
  • Notably, over the years, SpaceX has mastered the process of landing its smaller workhouse rocket, the Falcon 9.
  • That process, however, is very different, with the booster landing on specially-built platforms using landing legs strapped to its side, rather than being caught in mid-air.
Starship importance
  • Starship is a key part of SpaceX’s plans to send astronauts or/and cargo to celestial bodies.
  • The company wants to use the Starship HLS (Human Landing System) to take NASA astronauts back to the moon by 2026 as a part of the Artemis III mission.
  • SpaceX has received government contracts worth up to around $4 billion to complete the task.
  • Eventually, SpaceX hopes that Starship will put the first humans on Mars.
Source- Indian Express

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