"A wonderful soft landing" comment the ecstatic SpaceX teams.
The footage from the flight of the Starship SN10 prototype rocket, which lasted several minutes, is stunning.
For the first time, after several unsuccessful attempts, a prototype manages to land a single piece.
However, the joy was short-lived: a few minutes later, the rocket exploded in a ball of fire and smoke propelling the machine several meters high above its landing area located in Boca Chica in a no-man's land. to in Texas.
Everything had started well during this third test of the SpaceX rocket founded by billionaire Elon Musk. Powered by three engines, the machine reached an altitude of 10 km. The rocket then returned to a vertical position, managing to land in the desired location. But the engineers see flames at the base of the prototype, which ends up exploding. Two previous trials had ended in a fireball in December 2020 and last February. This is the first time that the SpaceX program rocket has successfully landed in one piece.
