All I can say is AWESOME!
While not perfect, the third test flight of SpaceX’s Starship hit most of its major milestones and provided some of the most awesome images ever sent live from space, including high-definition video from the outside of the spacecraft during the initial phases of reentry.
You could see the plasma envelope develop around the heat shield at the beginning of reentry–something never seen before.
AWESOME!
SpaceX had a significant number of objectives to meet, and it succeeded in proving much of the design and engineering of the spacecraft.
The major milestones were to be:
- Successful launch of the booster and vehicle
- Safe separation of the booster from the vehicle
- Reentry of booster
- Landing in the sea using Raptor engines (no recovery of booster)
- Suborbital trajectory of Starship
- Test of payload doors
- Test of fuel transfer
- Successful relight of Space Raptor…
