The SN5 prototype for SpaceX's Mars-colonizing Starship has made its first successful uncrewed test flight, space.com reported
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th August, 2020) The SN5 prototype for SpaceX's Mars-colonizing Starship has made its first successful uncrewed test flight, space.com reported.
The brief flight took place at 6:57 p.m. local time (23:57 GMT) on Tuesday. The test vehicle made a short 150 meter (492 feet) hop from the Space X's site near the South Texas village of Boca Chica.
"Mars is looking real," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter after the test flight.
It comes after previous prototypes, except for the first one (Starhopper), failed during testing. In November 2019, the Starship Mk1 prototype was damaged during a cryogenic pressure test. In February 2020, the Starship SN1 prototype exploded during a liquid nitrogen pressure test.
In April, the Starship SN3 prototype was destroyed during a pressure test. Back then, Musk said that it might have been a test configuration mistake. In another test a month later, the SN4 went up in flames due to what appears to have been a gas leak.
