SpaceX carried out the largest recovery operation in its history, retrieving the Starship spacecraft from the Indian Ocean approximately one month after its test flight. AP reports, UNN writes.
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Elon Musk’s company is now transporting Starship back to the Starbase facility in Texas. The journey is expected to take several months. SpaceX also released photographs of the recovery operation near Christmas Island.
Starship launched from Texas on July 24 as part of its 13th test flight. Unlike previous launches, the spacecraft survived approximately an hour of flight, after which it splashed down in the Indian Ocean and remained sufficiently intact for subsequent recovery.
SpaceX will obtain additional data for Starship’s development
We congratulate the entire SpaceX Recovery team on its work under challenging conditions, which gave our engineers access to a tremendous amount of data to continue Starship’s rapid development
The company plans to use Starship for future missions to the Moon and Mars. NASA is also counting on the spacecraft as part of its lunar program and plans to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon.
At SpaceX, the recovered spacecraft is being viewed as an additional source of technical data that will help assess its condition after the flight and improve future versions of Starship.
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