SpaceX successfully launched its experimental rocket ship called Starhopper for a final hover test in South Texas on Tuesday. It took the spacecraft approximately 492-feet (150-meters) in the air for about a minute before gently touching down on a beach-side landing pad a few hundred feet away. Starhopper is just a test vehicle for Starship, which is being designed to send people to the Moon and Mars. Read more for the video replay and additional information.
The 60-foot-tall Starhopper is just a squat steel prototype of a planned Mars launch system called Starship, which the company hopes to complete within the next few years. The production vehicle will be a fully resuable, two-stage launch system, and it could stand nearly 40 stories tall, powered by 40 methane- and oxygen-burning Raptor rocket engines.
