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Starhopper takes offThe Starhopper, SpaceX’s prototype for its interplanetary spacecraft Starship, made its first flight without a leash tying it to the ground on 25 July
By Leah CraneSpaceX’s Starhopper is off its leash. The squat spacecraft had never flown before without being tethered to the ground – and even then it lifted off by about a metre at the most – but on the evening of 25 July it finally took its first free flight from the company’s Texas launchpad.
Starhopper is a scaled down prototype for SpaceX’s planned Starship spacecraft, which is planned to be the top half of the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR. It’s the ship that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he will use to send humans to Mars, where it will land upright with the capacity to take off again.
The final Starship will be powered by six Raptor engines, which are also being developed by SpaceX, but Starhopper only has one, so it doesn’t make true launches, just smaller “hops” to check the design. This test was also the first time a Raptor engine has flown. When the engine itself was tested at full power on 16 July an enormous fireball engulfed the entire spacecraft, but it did not do any damage and the problem appears to have been fixed – 25 July’s test did not have any unexpected conflagration.
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Drone cam pic.twitter.com/gVdMrMgUZq
— e^ (@elonmusk) July 26, 2019
This test was designed to take Starhopper about 20 metres in the air, and while Musk tweeted that it was successful he did not confirm whether it reached its full altitude. Videos show the craft shrouded in the thick clouds billowing from its engine as it rose upwards, moved slightly to the side, and landed again, so it’s not clear exactly how high it hopped.
After confirming the flight’s success, Musk said that there will be another test in the next week or two, this one flying ten times as high. And SpaceX is already working on two bigger prototypes, with teams in Texas and Florida building second-generation Starhoppers that will each be fitted with three engines instead of one.
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