Starship Test Flight 10 achieved success with a controlled ocean landing and satellite deployment.
If you’ve been watching the previous Starship test launches you know that the last few haven’t gone very well. Here’s how flight 7 ended back in January.
Just saw the most insane #spacedebris #meteorshower right now in Turks and Caicos @elonmusk what is it?? pic.twitter.com/a7f4MbEB8Q— Dean Olson (@deankolson87) January 16, 2025
Flight #8 ended pretty much the same. Flight 9 was an improvement but also a mixed bag.
There were some initial successes but ultimately neither the ship nor the booster were able to land as hoped.
The big success today was the reuse of the booster from test flight #7. Of course Space X has been reusing boosters on its Falcon 9 rockets for years now, and two other companies have achieved this as well. But the size of Starship is much greater (around 400 ft.) and it lacks any landing gear. Instead it gets caught out of the air by Mechazilla, the launch tower with it’s giant arms.
So the liftoff today went well and the reusable booster didn’t lose any engines during the boost phase. Next there was a new maneuver at stage separation designed to flip the booster quickly in the right direction to return. That also worked and all six of the ship’s engines were working.
The plan for this flight was never to try for a catch of the booster. Instead, Space X wanted to try a new more aggressive reentry to see how that would affect the booster and then try to «land» it in the Gulf where it would splash into the water in a controlled way.
