The third attempt at launching the Flight 10 Starship was lucky for SpaceX as everything went according to plan. The last and most important objective was to land the upper stage Starship 37 in the Indian Ocean — it was perfect as well.
Elon Musk’s commercial spaceflight company SpaceX shared the stunning footage of the last moments of the Flight 10 Starship performing a landing burn and making a soft water landing.
SpaceX staff at both Starbase, Texas, and the company’s HQ in Hawthorne, California, celebrated this moment by expressing their utmost excitement and satisfaction. Ship 37 was the first Starship V2 prototype to complete its course and achieve its planned objectives.
Interestingly, due to the atmospheric reentry burn, Flight 10 upper stage Starship 37 looked orange. The magma effect caused by extreme heat and friction was evident at the time of the landing as well. The heat shield tiles became orange after bearing extreme reentry temperatures.
This coloration made the landing look even more exciting as Musk promises that excitement is guaranteed with all Starship launches.
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Above: Video of the Flight 10 Starship upper stage as it lands in the Indian Ocean.
Starship Flight 10 Objectives
The successful Flight 10 Starship mission has given SpaceX its lost confidence back as the previous two flight tests were a failure as long as the upper stage is concerned.
The Flight 8 and Flight 7 Starships experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD) in space. Flight 9 Starship mission missed some objectives as well because SpaceX couldn’t maintain a controlled atmospheric reentry.
According to SpaceX, the main payload and objective of Starship test flights is ‘Data’, and Flight 10 was a complete success in this matter.
However, yesterday’s Starship Flight 10 launch and landing test met all of the following objectives:
- Successful stage separation
- Hot-staging ring jettisoned perfectly
- Starship upper stage coasted in space on its planned sub-orbital trajectory and completed its course
- Successfully opened the payload door in space
- Deployed eight Starlink V3 simulator (dummy) satellites in space
- Successfully relighted a single-engine in space
- Entered the Earth’s atmosphere with some intentionally missing heat shield tiles
- Followed its planned trajectory
- Relighted a single-engine and performed a belly-flop maneuver
- Successfully made a soft splashdown landing in the Indian Ocean
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Featured image credit: Elon Musk / X (Twitter).
Note: This article was published earlier on Tesla Oracle. Author: Iqtidar Ali.