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SpaceX SN15 Starship Sticks Its Landing

SpaceX SN15 Starship Sticks Its Landing

At long last, it's a clear win for SpaceX and its "Starship," the rocket SpaceX wants to use to take mankind back to the moon -- and then to Mars. A series of test launches ending in fiery impacts, then an apparently successful landing that exploded seconds after it appeared to have succeeded (SN10), then a flight that might have been successful but was conducted in such thick fog that SpaceX had to destroy the vehicle in flight (SN11), concluded yesterday when Starship SN15 took off from SpaceX's Spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas, flew to 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) altitude, descended, and conducted a picture-perfect landing on its tail. Once again, to clear up any confusion, SpaceX has pre-named its test flights, so that the number following the alphabetic code (SN1, SN11, SN15, etc.) doesn't necessarily refer to the number of test flights the company has conducted as of any given date.