Everything went quiet following the dramatic explosion last month that destroyed SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft during ground-based preparations for the vehicle’s 10th flight test.
But SpaceX chief Elon Musk has now revealed that his team expects to fly the Starship — comprising the first-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft — in about three weeks’ time.
The huge explosion at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, took everyone by surprise, and fortunately no one was killed or injured in the massive fireball.
A few days after it happened, SpaceX said the explosion occurred as the team was loading cryogenic propellant onto the spacecraft in preparation for a six-engine static fire test “when a sudden energetic event resulted in the complete loss of Starship and damage to the immediate area surrounding the stand.”
SpaceX said that its preliminary investigation indicated “the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship’s nosecone area,” though it has yet to publish a full data review, which should contain more details about what actually happened.
The Starship program is certainly no stranger to large explosions and disintegrations, but they usually occur in midair, well after the rocket has left the launchpad.
The first Starship flight test took place in April 2023. During the early part of the ascent, multiple Raptor engines failed on the Super Heavy booster. When stage separation failed to occur, the vehicle began to spin and was intentionally destroyed by the flight termination system about four minutes after launch at an altitude of 24.2 miles (39 km).
The following eight flights have produced mixed results — while the team has managed to land the Super Heavy back at base in what is an extraordinary maneuver, the upper-stage spacecraft has suffered some rougher rides in recent flights.
Still, SpaceX seems pretty happy with the flight tests overall, and is using the data gathered from each one to try to improve the design and performance of the vehicle.
Once fully operational, the Starship will be used for crew and cargo missions to the lunar surface, with crewed missions to Mars also on the cards.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.