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SpaceX has launched the latest test flight of Starship, the most powerful rocket system ever built, which could one day be used to transport humans to the Moon and Mars.
The rocket’s super-heavy booster, capping the unmanned spacecraft, was launched at 8:25 a.m. ET (7:25 a.m. Central) during a 30-minute launch window that opened at 8 a.m. ET SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
The mission is Live broadcast on XThe social networking site formerly known as Twitter.
For the first time, this demonstration mission included an ambitious attempt to maneuver the rocket’s 232-foot-tall (71 m) booster into a massive landing structure after it had burned off most of its fuel and separated from the upper spacecraft. The Super Heavy was successfully captured in mid-air using massive metal pincers, which SpaceX calls “chopsticks.”
Meanwhile, the Starship spacecraft will continue to fly alone, using its six onboard engines, before performing a landing maneuver over the Indian Ocean. SpaceX does not expect to recover the overhead spacecraft.
The goal of each milestone is to see how SpaceX can one day recover and quickly relaunch its Super Heavy boosters and Starship spacecraft for future missions. Reusing rocket parts quickly is essential to SpaceX’s goal of dramatically reducing the time and cost of transporting cargo — or ships of people — into Earth orbit and deep space.
SpaceX eventually plans to use the Starship capsule as a lander that will take NASA astronauts to the lunar surface as soon as 2026 as part of the Artemis III mission, and the company has government contracts worth nearly $4 billion to complete the mission. Eventually, SpaceX also hopes that Starship will put the first humans on Mars.
Development of the spacecraft so far has focused on a series of increasingly complex test flights, starting in 2019 with short hop tests of a vehicle nicknamed “Starhopper” that initially rose just inches from Earth. Recently, the company has moved on to more aggressive launches for its fully stacked Starship capsule and Super Heavy booster.
The first test launch of the Starship and Super Heavy vehicles — called an integrated test flight — took place in April 2023. That launch was intended only to get the 397-foot-tall (121-meter) vehicle off the launch pad. It did just that before exploding minutes after flying over the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX is known to embrace mishaps in the early stages of spacecraft development, saying these failures help the company quickly implement design changes that lead to better outcomes.
The company’s goals became more ambitious with each additional launch.
The latest test — the fourth of SpaceX’s integrated test flight campaign — lifted off in June. Although both the rocket and spacecraft showed a burned-out, wobbly wing during the online broadcast, they survived reentry into Earth’s atmosphere and performed landing maneuvers over the ocean, an important step forward.
SpaceX pushed its testing further by recovering the Super Heavy rocket after launch.
Eventually, SpaceX plans to recover and reuse both the Super Heavy and Starship spacecraft. But starting with booster recovery is a natural first step, as SpaceX has extensive experience in this field.
Landing rocket boosters after flight is a feat that SpaceX perfected with its smaller rocket, the Falcon 9. That rocket’s boosters have achieved soft landings on marine navigation platforms or land platforms after more than 330 launches, allowing those vehicles to be refurbished and flying again. . SpaceX says this lowered its costs, allowing the company to undercut the rest of the rocket market.
However, a spacecraft is a much more powerful and complex system.
With 33 engines at its base, each more powerful than one of the nine engines used in the Falcon, the Super Heavy booster packs nearly 10 times the thrust at liftoff.
Instead of attaching landing legs to the side of the Super Heavy like those adorning the Falcon 9 booster, SpaceX instead built a special tower to support the Super Heavy’s return to solid Earth, hoping that would make the recovery process faster.
The tower called “MicazelaSpaceX CEO Elon Musk likened him to a metal Godzilla, and has huge metal arms. The arms, or “chopsticks,” can be used to stack and move boosters and spacecraft at the launch site before liftoff — and are essentially designed to catch vehicles in midair as they return to the earth.
Musk’s vision is that the chopsticks’ arms will eventually be able to simply rotate and return the rocket to the launch pad within minutes of its return — allowing the vehicle to take off again once it’s refueled — perhaps 30 minutes after landing, the president said. Executive on June 5 interview.
It’s a bold vision. SpaceX is still in the early stages of determining exactly how the trap will work.
Musk admitted during July interview He posted on YouTube that SpaceX’s goal for this flight “seems kind of crazy,” even though it “has a good chance of success.”
“We’re not breaking physics, so success is one possible outcome here,” he said.
SpaceX certified the Super Heavy rocket to “meet thousands of distinct vehicle and pad parameters,” according to the company’s website, which requires “intact systems on the booster and tower and manual command from the mission flight director.”
If it were to try After waving, the Super Heavy would have attempted the landing maneuver over the ocean again.
The attempt occurred about seven minutes after launch, while the Starship spacecraft will head to the coast for about an hour before making a controlled landing attempt in the Indian Ocean.
Musk added that one of the problems the spacecraft encountered during its fourth test flight in June was the loss of heat shield tiles — or thousands of small black hexagons affixed to the spacecraft’s exterior that are meant to protect the vehicle from extreme temperatures during reentry. According to Musk, losing a large number of those tiles severely hampered the car’s ability to attempt a soft landing.
“Because of the missing tiles, the front flaps melted to the point that it was like trying to control them with tiny skeletal hands,” Musk said, adding that the fourth flight landed about 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) from its intended landing site in the ocean. .
The company states on its website that it performed a “complete rework of its heat shield, with SpaceX technicians spending more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer-generation tiles, a back-up layer, and additional protection between the flap structures.” “.
This could help the spacecraft better survive the brutality of reentry.
If this journey is successful, it could push the company to tackle more ambitious projects. For example, SpaceX must figure out how to refuel the Starship spacecraft while it is in orbit. Such a maneuver would be necessary to give the massive vehicle enough fuel to make the trip to the moon.
If the company fails to meet its goals or causes serious damage to its launch facilities, it could raise questions about additional delays to NASA’s lunar ambitions.
Artemis, NASA’s flagship human spaceflight program, aims to put astronauts on the moon for the first time since the Apollo program ended more than 50 years ago.
Already, the Federal Space Agency has warned that its goal of making the first manned moon landing in 2026 could be disrupted by the spacecraft’s development timeline.
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