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SpaceX has captivated attention and extended limits with each test flight of the Starship, the most potent rocket system ever built. The latest mission of the almost 400-foot-tall (121-meter) craft aims to stretch capabilities even further in a pursuit to bring astronauts back to the moon and ultimately realize CEO Elon Musk’s vision of sending the first humans to Mars.
NASA has committed to compensating SpaceX nearly $3 billion to develop the Starship, which is expected to function as a lunar lander transporting humans to the moon’s surface as early as 2027.
The forthcoming flight will assess an enhancement of Starship that seeks to boost the vehicle’s functionalities — and its capacity to endure the return journey from space — alongside executing an experimental maneuver aimed at evaluating how satellites may deploy from this “new generation” of the spacecraft.
Originally set to launch on Wednesday, SpaceX has now scheduled Thursday due to unfavorable weather, as shared on X, the social media platform previously referred to as Twitter, which Musk acquired in 2022. Additionally, Thursday is the day when Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin plans to make a second attempt to launch its New Glenn rocket for its inaugural flight. Blue Origin aims to utilize New Glenn to enhance competition with SpaceX, which has long dominated the global launch industry.
Liftoff is currently anticipated to occur no sooner than 5 p.m. ET (4 p.m. local time) on Thursday from SpaceX’s launchpad at its Starbase facility located near Brownsville, Texas. The launch window will remain open for one hour. The company plans to stream the event live on its website and X.
The Super Heavy rocket booster, the bottom part of the vehicle known as the first stage, provides initial thrust after liftoff. The booster will ignite its 33 Raptor engines for approximately 2 ½ minutes to propel the attached uncrewed Starship vehicle into space.
Remarkably, for the first time, one of those 33 Raptor engines has flown to space before: SpaceX stated it is reusing an engine retrieved from the Super Heavy booster that was in flight during the company’s fifth test in October.
Testing the capability of the Raptor engines to support multiple missions is crucial for SpaceX: The company plans to reintegrate every section of the Starship system to minimize expenses and reduce the interval between missions.
The highly awaited launch will signify the seventh flight of the completely integrated Starship system.
Will Super Heavy booster replicate midair landing maneuver?
After depleting most of its fuel, the Super Heavy booster will then separate from the Starship spacecraft, triggering its own engines and begin ascending into space.
The enormous booster will navigate itself back toward the launch site and strive for a soft landing, aiming to touch down accurately between two colossal metallic pincers, or “chopsticks,” connected to SpaceX’s launch tower, humorously dubbed “Mechazilla” by CEO Elon Musk.
SpaceX successfully performed the maneuver for the first time back in October. Duringthe upcoming flight test in November, nevertheless, it canceled a Super Heavy landing attempt on solid ground after landing zone sensors were compromised during the initial launch. Technicians discovered that “essential hardware” failed to meet health standards.
Instead, the Super Heavy booster descended into the Gulf of Mexico and was not retrieved.
In the imminent trial, SpaceX will again have the possibility to alter its strategy midflight and conduct an ocean splashdown of the booster if any safety concerns occur.
However, SpaceX expressed greater optimism, noting in a blog entry that enhancements to the launch and catch tower will improve booster capture reliability. These enhancements feature enhanced protection for sensors on Mechazilla that failed during the November test flight, prompting the company to switch to an ocean landing.
Meanwhile, the Starship vehicle, or the rocket’s upper section intended for transporting satellites or passengers, will trial a set of improvements made by the company.
The spacecraft’s propulsion system, for instance, has been modified to increase the propellant capacity by 25%. An increased fuel capacity enables the vehicle to operate its engines for a longer time. Before this test flight, the Starship spacecraft was able to store around 1,200 metric tons (2.6 million pounds) of oxidizer and fuel, the company previously stated.
In a significant first, Starship will also aim to deploy 10 satellite “simulators,” SpaceX mentioned, which will be “comparable in size and weight” to the company’s upcoming generation of Starlink internet satellites. The simulators will not remain in space, as per the company’s indication. Rather, they will follow a suborbital trajectory, much like the Starship spacecraft, which is expected to splash down in the Indian Ocean approximately one hour post-launch.
Before this specific spacecraft meets its watery end, however, SpaceX will evaluate several additional vital objectives.
While Starship is active in space, SpaceX will strive to relight one of its engines — investigating how the craft might reignite its propulsion system multiple times on upcoming missions that necessitate several engine burns. The company had previously tested relighting a Starship engine during the November trial, considering that attempt a success.
In this seventh test flight of the integrated rocket system, SpaceX has implemented changes to Starship that comprise modifications to the vehicle’s flaps, or the wing-like formations extending from the craft’s tip. For this mission, the flaps are smaller and positioned further towards the tip of the vehicle, per SpaceX.
This modification is intended to alleviate the stress on the flaps during reentry, which is the segment of the flight when Starship begins its descent back into Earth’s atmosphere while still moving at thousands of miles per hour, according to SpaceX. This maneuver can elevate Starship’s surface temperature beyond 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit (1,427 degrees Celsius), as indicated by prior flight data, and has previously scorched Starship’s flaps into “skeleton hands,” as Musk described, under the extreme stresses of reentry.
Since the initiation of test launches for the Starship system in April 2023, SpaceX has observed the Starship vehicle transition from explosive failures minutes after liftoff to refined flights that conclude with the vehicle successfully landing in the ocean. The successful recovery of a Super Heavy booster at its launch site utilizing the “chopstick” catch technique in October also represented a significant advancement.
However, the Starship system has a considerable journey ahead before it can bring humans back to the lunar surface or transport the first humans to Mars.
SpaceX has not yet executed a mission to orbit or examined how Starship will rendezvous with another craft for refueling in space,“`html
a tactic the firm must master to provision the craft with sufficient fuel to reach the moon.
In 2020, Musk expressed his aspiration that SpaceX would carry out “hundreds of missions” involving satellites prior to attempting a manned Starship journey.
As shown by the Starlink simulators during this recent flight, the firm intends to utilize Starship for deploying groups of its internet-transmitting satellites in the future.
Comparable to the Super Heavy booster, this upper section of the vehicle is designed to land vertically within the arms of the Mechazilla launch tower post-flight to enable swift reuse.
During the livestream of SpaceX’s test launch in November, SpaceX engineers Jessie Anderson and Kate Tice revealed that the company was nearing completion of the 1 million-square-foot (92,903-square-meter) “Starfactory” at its Starbase location in South Texas. The objective for that facility is to produce Starship spacecraft — “hundreds of vessels each year,” stated Anderson.
SpaceX anticipates needing a substantial fleet of Super Heavy boosters — along with an even larger array of Starship spacecraft.
This is due to the fact that the Starship units “will be remaining in orbit for extended duration missions to travel to the moon or Mars or serve as tankers for refueling,” Anderson explained. “Yet the boosters will return and prepare to launch the succeeding vessel.”
“That (production rate) might seem absurd,” Tice remarked. “And that’s because it truly is.”
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