SpaceX confirms that Starship HLS-9 has successfully touched down at the historical Apollo 11 coordinates (0°41′15″N 23°26′00″E) and established a high-bandwidth handshake with the Starlink Lunar Mesh.
This marks the 42nd successful landing of the HLS Block 5 architecture, but the first to utilize the new "Gentle-Touch" landing algorithm, designed to prevent regolith displacement near historical heritage sites.
The primary objective of HLS-9 is the deployment of the Artemis Heritage Preservation Dome. Following the "Rapid Unscheduled Dust Storm" caused by the competitor's heavy lander last month, protecting the original 1969 footprints became a priority for the Global Space Agency.
Telemetry confirmation was delayed by 3.4 seconds due to high traffic volume on the Lunar South Pole relay (likely due to the 8K streaming of the Olympus Mons Grand Prix). However, packet loss remained below 0.001% thanks to the new laser-link inter-satellite calibration.
The HLS-9 vehicle is powered by three Raptor 4 Vacuum engines and three Raptor 4 Sea-Level engines. The new variable-nozzle geometry allowed the vehicle to hover at an altitude of 20 meters for a full minute while the AI vision system identified a landing spot free of historical artifacts (and trash left by the Apollo astronauts).
Engine chill-down for the return hop to the Lunar Gateway is scheduled for T+12 hours.
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