A prototype of the Starship spacecraft that SpaceX hopes to one day send to Mars has had its second outing, and a hugely successful one at that. The Starhopper completed its second test hop at the company’s Boca Chica test facility in Texas today, reaching its highest altitude yet before returning safely to solid ground.
A fully developed Starship would offer the carrying capacity needed to deliver dozens of people and cargo to the surface of Mars, though there is a long way to go before that happens.
The program is for now in its early testing phase, with engineers at SpaceX putting a prototype named Starhopper through a series of sub-orbital, up-and-down jaunts to practice their launching and landing chops.
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