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People gather as the SpaceX Starship spacecraft prototype is transported from the launch site ahead of SpaceX Starship’s third flight test from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.
SpaceX plans to try to relaunch Starship on Thursday. Starship is the world’s most powerful rocket, crucial to NASA’s plans to land astronauts on the moon later this year and Elon Musk’s hopes of eventually colonizing Mars. be.
The last two attempts ended in spectacular blowouts, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The company has adopted a rapid trial-and-error approach to accelerate development, a strategy that has brought success in the past.
Launches from the company’s launch site in southeast Texas could begin at 7 a.m. local time (12:00 GMT) after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave the go-ahead on Wednesday.
SpaceX will begin a webcast on its website 30 minutes in advance.
When Starship’s two stages are combined, the rocket will be 397 feet (121 meters) tall, easily 90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty.
Its super-heavy booster generates 16.7 million pounds (74.3 meganewtons) of thrust. This is almost twice as powerful as her second most powerful rocket in the world, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), although the latter is now fully operational.
Starship’s third launch test in its full-stack configuration is set to be its most ambitious yet.
In addition to going higher and farther, objectives include testing Starship’s ability to open and close its payload door to carry satellites and other cargo into space.
SpaceX also aims to conduct onboard tests to reignite the ship’s engines in space and allow future spacecraft to refuel each other in orbit.
Starship’s planned trajectory will see it reach orbit just over an hour after liftoff and make a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX has been developing a Starship prototype since 2018, and early tests included an upper-stage short hop, also known as Starship.
Is it third time lucky?
The first “integration” test took place in April 2023. SpaceX was forced to blow up Starship within minutes of liftoff because the two stages could not be separated.
The rocket broke into a ball of fire and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, kicking up a cloud of dust over towns miles (kilometers) away.
A second experiment conducted in November 2023 yielded slightly better results. The boosters separated from the spacecraft, but both subsequently exploded at sea. The company euphemistically called this an “unscheduled rapid demolition.”
The FAA closed its investigation into the incident last month after SpaceX identified 17 necessary corrective actions.
SpaceX’s “rapid iterative development” strategy has served the company well in the past. In particular, the Falcon 9 rocket has become a workhorse for NASA and the commercial sector, the Dragon capsule delivers astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, and the Starlink internet satellite constellation now covers dozens of countries.
But the clock is ticking until SpaceX is ready to use NASA’s modified Starship as a lander to return astronauts to the moon in 2026.
SpaceX not only needs to prove that it can launch, fly and land Starship safely, but also that it can eventually send multiple “Starship tankers” into orbit to refuel the flagship Starship on its way to the moon. Must.
