SpaceX had a significant week with its Starship, the company’s most potent rocket, undergoing its third test launch on Thursday. Unlike its two previous attempts, this one didn’t end in an explosion, marking a notable success for the Elon Musk-led company. However, despite the successful launch, the spacecraft was lost upon re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. Meanwhile, NASA is intensifying efforts to safeguard Voyager 1, humanity’s farthest-reaching spacecraft, to prevent any potential loss.
Indeed, avoiding explosions might seem like a modest achievement for a rocket, but in reality, it’s quite significant. Rockets have a notorious penchant for exploding, almost as if it’s in their nature. Just the day before the third Starship launch, Kairos, a privately-built Japanese rocket, met a fiery fate shortly after liftoff. Despite its smaller size compared to behemoths like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Kairos couldn’t evade the explosive fate. And when it comes to scale, Falcon 9 itself pales in comparison to the sheer power and potential of Starship.
Flight 3 liftoff as viewed from the top of the tower pic.twitter.com/JPlXDBONAb
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 15, 2024
Upon completion of its testing phase, Starship will not only claim the title of the largest rocket ever built by humans but also the most formidable in terms of power. According to the company, the launch system will boast an impressive capacity, capable of carrying 150 metric tonnes in reusable mode and a whopping 250 tonnes in expendable mode.
The Super Heavy booster, serving as the initial stage of the Starship system, boasts an extraordinary assembly of 33 Raptor engines, collectively capable of generating nearly 7,600 tons of thrust. The subsequent stage, the Starship spacecraft, features six Raptor engines, with three specifically engineered to operate efficiently in the vacuum of space.
SpaceX is integrating an astonishing number of immensely powerful rocket engines into the Starship system. Given the unprecedented nature of their endeavor, many would have anticipated an explosion rather than the nearly flawless flight that was witnessed.
In contrast to established government space agencies like NASA, SpaceX operates as a startup. This distinction underscores SpaceX’s adherence to the startup philosophy of embracing rapid iteration through failure. While NASA tends to prioritize achieving perfection before launching missions, SpaceX prioritizes completing missions expediently, even if setbacks occur, in order to gain valuable insights for improvement through iterative processes.
Despite their divergent methodologies, NASA and SpaceX maintain a significant interdependence. SpaceX relies heavily on NASA’s financial support for the development of Starship, whereas the success of NASA’s Artemis missions, aimed at returning humans to the Moon after an absence of nearly fifty years, is contingent upon SpaceX’s timely completion of work on Starship under the leadership of Elon Musk.
In the same timeframe that NASA encountered setbacks with Starship, they celebrated a notable achievement with the recovery of the Voyager 1 probe. Voyager 1 holds the distinction of being the first spacecraft to venture beyond the heliosphere into interstellar space and remains the farthest human-made object in space. As of the current moment, the robotic craft is situated over 24 million kilometers away from Earth. To grasp the magnitude of its distance, consider that this exceeds 162 times the span between the Earth and the Sun.
An update on my twin #Voyager1: The team recently sent a "poke" to prompt V1's flight data system (FDS) and received a signal that differed from past attempts. A DSN engineer helped decode this signal, which may contain clues to the source of the issue: https://t.co/tDWLtmu6D2 pic.twitter.com/fwL59We1nf
— NASA Voyager (@NASAVoyager) March 13, 2024
Since November 2023, NASA teams have been grappling with what they describe as “incoherent” data from the Voyager 1 spacecraft. This raised concerns that the pioneering probe, after half a century of service, might be lost. However, after months of uncertainty, NASA has begun to unravel the issues plaguing Voyager 1 and may be on track to resolving them.
Curiously, the potential loss of Voyager 1 wouldn’t constitute solely a scientific setback, but also an emotional one. Launched in 1977 alongside its sibling, Voyager 2, the mission was originally slated for a mere five years. Remarkably, Voyager 1 has surpassed its intended mission duration by over four decades. It prompts reflection—how often do we purchase something intended for a short span only to witness it endure for nearly half a century?
