by After three catastrophic mistakes in the flight in a row, SpaceX led a huge super heavy star rocket for the start on Sunday evening from the golf coast in Texas to put a variety of upgrades on the test and intentionally emphasize the vehicle in order to learn more about its skills.
Test flight no. 10 is expected to start at 7:30 p.m. EDT, since the weather allows the 33 methane burner raptor engines of the Super Heavy in the Starbase Manufacturing and Flight Facility of the company near Brownsville, Texas, and the Mexican border to life.
A SpaceX missile from SpaceX Super Heavyship is available for the 10th test flight of the program from the Starbase Flight and Manufacturing facility of the company at the Texas Gulf Coast. The 40-story rocket is the most powerful that has ever been built and is crucial for the long-term plans of founder Elon Musk to send people to Mars. / Credit: Stephen Clark/ ARS Technica
The flight schedule required the 30-foot widths of 230 feet high Super-Heavy booster, which produced more than £ 16 million to drive the spaceship out of the dense lower atmosphere before it fell away, freaked around and goes back to the coast.
While three of the nine earlier test flights flew back to his start pad, on which huge mechanical weapons on the service gantry plucked the descending rocket out of the air. This time it is expected that the super bad thing will be injected due to the planned tests in the Golf.
“The primary test goals for the booster will concentrate on the landing race and use unique engine configurations,” said SpaceX on his website. “One of the three mid -motors used for the last phase of the landing is deliberately deactivated to collect data about the ability of a backup engine from the middle ring to complete landing burning.”
The booster then uses two engines towards the end of the descent and floats briefly before falling into the Golf.
The 160-foot spaceship, which is now driven by six of its own raptor engines, will deal with a suborbital trajectory that is carrying it around the world in the world, before a belly-first reorganization, a setback back into the vertical and a rocket-powered descent to the splash in the Indian ocean.
In addition to the provision of eight Starlink simulator satellites, the Starship flight computer tries a variety of other tests, including a restart in the room engine, to check the implementation of numerous upgrades that have been implemented in the course of the last test flight failures.
The IFT-10 Super Heavy Booster is moved to the start pad in this dramatic nightly view of the Starbase facility of SpaceX. The booster near the center of the photo visible. / Credit: SpaceX
“The flight test includes several experiments that are designed to enable the upper stage of the starship to return to the starting point,” said SpaceX.
“During the re -entry, a significant number of tiles were removed from the spaceship to the areas in need of protection in the entire vehicle,” added the company. “The REENTRY profile of the Starship profile should deliberately burden the structural limits of the rear level of the rear level at the time of the dynamic pressure of the maximum entry.”
The elaboration of the beetles from the huge launcher is of crucial importance for SpaceX and the founder Elon Musk, who has designed the ultra-hungry rocket to start thousands of starlinks and other satellites of the next generation in the earth orbit and one day to carry settlers and equipment on Mars.
The rocket is also of crucial importance for NASA, which SpaceX pays more than 3 billion US dollars for the development of a modified version of the upper Starship stage to bring Artemis astronauts to the surface of the moon in 2027.
However, this flight requires 10 to 20 super heavy starship flights, just to recharge the “human state system” or HLS before going to the moon. The transmission of thousands of gallons super cold of liquid nitrogen and oxygen in the room was never tried.
And it is still not known how SpaceX plans to check the pouring temperatures to minimize the amount that naturally heats up and turns into a gas that has to be vented overboard. SpaceX has not given any details.
In view of the number of flights that have to be carried out successfully to demonstrate reliability, the target date 2027 for Artemis 3 moon landing by many aerospace observers will be made as unrealistic, if not impossible.
China plans to start its own astronauts on the moon in 2030, and regardless of the outcome of the test flight on Sunday, it is unclear whether NASA and SpaceX will return with the variant of the Starship Lander before the Chinese flag on the moon surface.
In view of the sheer size and power of the Super-Schwerstarts-ES, more than twice as high as the boost of the current space start system or the SLS rocket of NASA goods is not unexpected during development.
The upper star stage for SpaceXs 10. Test flight is dragged to the start pad by his processing hangar. / Credit: SpaceX
In view of the short time between now and the first planned Artemis Moon Landing of the NASA, the problems have clearly thrown back the program and gained doubts about the overall mission architecture, in particular the requirement of 10 to 20 problem -free flights to promote the lander for his flight to the moon.
The first three test flights of the Super Heavy Booster and Starship Upper Stage in 2023 and 2024 ended in catastrophic mistakes, with both stadiums being destroyed, either while still or after separation.
The fourth flight in June 2024 was generally successful when the super heavy fly came back to a controlled splashdown in the Golf, while the spaceship followed the planned suborbital trajekt into the Indian ocean. The ship fins were damaged by re -entry heating, but otherwise as necessary.
The fifth flight in October 2024 was highlighted by a successful super -difficult return to the startpad gantry, in which the huge mechanical arms in the air grabbed the rocket. Meanwhile, the spaceship managed a second controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean, although it suffered damage again during the re -entry.
During the sixth integrated flight test in November 2024, the Super Heavy tried another return to the starting point, but it was redirected to a Golf splashdown because the starting damage to critical sensors in the capture mechanism of the pad was switched. The spaceship flew into a controlled Indian -Ocean splashdown with minimal flap damage.
But the next three flights in January, March and May of this year ended with catastrophic mistakes. Two super heavy booster successfully returned to the starting point, but the youngest separated over the Gulf and tested a high offer of attack.
All three spaceships were destroyed according to catastrophic malfunctions, including two lighter loses, a fire in the board and several motor errors.
In addition to the flight balance sheet, another spaceship was destroyed on the floor when a high-pressure nitrogen tank exploded during a engine test at the Starbase starting site.
Welcome to New Orleans
Maryland Governor Wes Moore calls Trump DC National Guard “unconstitutional”
See the nation on page 2: Lawler, El-Erian and Russell
