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SpaceX's 'Starhopper' Starship Prototype Just Aced Its 1st Hop, Elon Musk Says
Source: Space.com
SpaceX's 'Starhopper' Starship Prototype Just Aced Its 1st Hop, Elon Musk Says
By Tariq Malik 14 hours ago Spaceflight
It was a short, tethered flight.
SpaceX just fired up the "Starhopper" prototype for the company's planned Starship spacecraft for the first time, according to company CEO Elon Musk.
Musk confirmed the short rocket test firing at SpaceX's newest launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, near Brownsville in a Twitter post late Wednesday (April 3). (In that post, he confirmed the Starhopper nickname for the Starship prototype as well.)
"Starhopper completed tethered hop," Musk wrote in the update, which also included a video from Starship watcher @LabPadre. "All systems green."
Link to tweet
The test occurred at 8:56 p.m. EDT (0056 April 4 GMT) and lasted less than a minute, according to one of several video feeds watching the company's launch site. The video featured above was captured by Spadre.com, a website for the South Padre Surf Company on South Padre Island across from SpaceX's facility. The camera is about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from SpaceX's site.
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Read more: https://www.space.com/spacex-starhopper-prototype-first-hop.html
