Banana for scale.
Banana for Scale
SpaceX’s latest test flight of its Starship spacecraft carried a highly unusual payload into orbit in its massive hold: a single banana.
Footage showed the interior of the behemoth rocket being adorned with a single lonely piece of fruit.
It also conveniently puts the size of the spacecraft to scale — and it’s a hilarious choice for a “zero gravity indicator,” a long-held tradition that has conventionally involved sending small stuffed toys up alongside astronauts to the International Space Station.
Emergency Splashdown
During SpaceX’s fifth orbital test flight last month, the company pulled off an incredible feat, catching the booster of the world’s largest and most powerful rocket ever built with a giant tower.
But today’s test launch didn’t quite go as smoothly. Starship’s Super Heavy stage successfully lifted the spacecraft into orbit, but appeared to sputter during its descent.
Instead, SpaceX made a call minutes into the launch to drop the booster into the Gulf of Mexico as part of a “booster offshore divert” maneuver, instead of catching it once again.
Live footage showed the massive booster successfully slow its descent, dipping gradually toward the water — before erupting in a massive fireball.
The Elon Musk-led company, however, remained optimistic, likely collecting plenty of data along the way.
“Super Heavy initiates its landing burn and softly splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico,” the company wrote in an update on X-formerly-Twitter.
It’s still unclear why SpaceX chose to call off the tower catch today.
But given the fact that SpaceX has yet again managed to launch the behemoth into orbit in one piece is an incredible feat of engineering in and of itself, highlighting just how far the space company has come.
Whether the banana is still edible following Starship’s landing remains to be seen.
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