SpaceX is preparing for the 10th test flight of the Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket comprising the upper-stage Starship spacecraft and the first-stage Super Heavy rocket.
The Elon Musk-led spaceflight company on Wednesday showed off the design of a new grid fin for the Super Heavy rocket. And with a surface area about 50% larger than the previous design, it’s massive.
To emphasize the fact, SpaceX shared a photo showing an engineer standing on one of the new grid fins, which act as aerodynamic control surfaces through small adjustments during flight. Take a look below:
The first grid fin for the next generation Super Heavy booster. The redesigned grid fins are 50% larger and higher strength, moving from four fins to three for vehicle control while enabling the booster to descend at higher angles of attack. pic.twitter.com/Nc6bavBHD8
The new design means that the booster will soon be fitted with three grid fins instead of four, enabling it to descend at higher angles of attack as it comes in to land back at the launch tower shortly after deploying the Starship spacecraft to orbit. You can see them attached to the rocket in the image below:
The fins will also be used for the spectacular “catch” maneuver whereby the tower deploys giant mechanical arms to secure the booster just above the ground on its return.
The fins have been moved further down the booster, too, with the new position reducing the heat they receive from the Starship spacecraft’s engines when they fire up during stage separation, lowering the risk of any damage occurring.
SpaceX is planning to launch the Starship from its Starbase site in Boca Chica, Texas, before the end of this month. NASA will be watching the proceedings carefully, as it wants to use the Starship — alongside its own SLS rocket — for crew and cargo missions to the moon as part of the Artemis program. NASA has already inked a deal with SpaceX to use a modified version of the Starship spacecraft to land two astronauts on the lunar surface in the Artemis III mission, currently set for 2027. But whether that target date holds remains to be seen.
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.