SpaceX’s Starship rocket last flew at the end of May. Just over two weeks later, as it prepared for the 10th flight test, the upper-stage Starship spacecraft suddenly exploded on the ground at SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas.
Not surprisingly, the setback delayed plans for the 10th flight test, but on Friday, SpaceX announced a target date for the highly anticipated event: Sunday, August 24, with a launch window opening at 6:30 p.m. CT (7:30 p.m. ET).
The tenth flight test of Starship is preparing to launch as soon as Sunday, August 24 → https://t.co/UIwbeGoo2B pic.twitter.com/j0YKKgAxAV
The Starship, which comprises the first-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft, is the most powerful rocket ever to fly, generating around 17 million pounds of thrust as it leaves the launchpad. NASA is planning to use the rocket for crew and cargo missions to the moon as part of the Artemis program, and even for the first crewed missions to Mars. But before then, SpaceX needs to fully prove the rocket’s capabilities and safety through continued refinement and testing.
In a post on its website on Friday, SpaceX said that its engineers have been spending the last few months making hardware and operational changes to increase the vehicle’s reliability.
Notably, the upcoming flight test will not see the upper-stage booster landing back at the launch tower as seen with some of the earlier flights. Instead, the 71-meter-tall booster will descend into the ocean, allowing SpaceX to test various controlled landing burns and recovery techniques without risking damage to the Starbase facilities.
SpaceX also said it will run several experiments focused on enabling the Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site in a future test.
“Flight tests continue to provide valuable learnings to inform the design of the next generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles,” the company said on Friday. “With production ramping up inside Starfactory at Starbase alongside new launch and test infrastructure actively being built in Texas and Florida, Starship is poised to continue iterating towards a rapidly and fully reusable launch system.”
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.