SpaceX launches 15th Starship flight; aborts booster recovery maneuver

SpaceX launched the 15th uncrewed flight of its next-generation Starship spacecraft from Texas on Friday. The company hopes the mission will be the first round-trip rocket voyage to orbit and then back to the very spot where it left Earth.

If all goes as planned, Starship’s upper-stage vessel will re-enter the atmosphere after nearly a day in orbit.

SpaceX planned to use a “chopstick”-arm technology to recover Starship’s lower-stage booster rocket shortly after the two parts of the spacecraft separate within minutes of the launch.

That maneuver was aborted shortly after the launch, according to a video livestream provided by the company. It wasn’t immediately clear why that process was not completed. The booster splashed down in the ocean Gulf of Mexico instead.

Bringing the top portion of the spacecraft safely intact to the platform where it was launched to orbit would mark a breakthrough in SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s ambition to produce a fully reusable rocket system.

The combined vehicle, consisting of the main Starship cargo-and-crew vessel perched atop its Super Heavy booster rocket and standing 40 stories high, roared off its launch pad Friday evening from SpaceX’s South Texas Starbase complex along the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville.

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business