SpaceX has been developing Starship prototype since 2018 (File)
Boca Chica and Medford Colonia, United States:
SpaceX plans another attempt Thursday to launch Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket that is critical to NASA’s plans to send astronauts to the moon later this decade and Elon Musk’s hopes of eventually colonizing Mars. .
Two previous attempts ended with spectacularly explosive results, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing: the company has adopted a rapid trial-and-error approach to speed development, and the strategy has been successful in the past.
Launch will begin at 7:00 a.m. local time (1200 GMT) from the company’s launch site in southeast Texas, following Wednesday’s approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
SpaceX will host a webcast on its website thirty minutes early.
When Starship’s two stages are combined, the rocket is 397 feet (121 meters) tall, 90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty.
Its Super Heavy booster produces 16.7 million pounds (74.3 meganewtons) of thrust, nearly twice as much as the world’s second-largest rocket, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), although the latter is now fully operational.
Starship’s third full-stack configuration launch test will be the most ambitious yet.
In addition to flying higher and farther, the goal is to open and close the Starship’s payload doors to test its ability to launch satellites and other cargo into space.
SpaceX also plans to reignite the spacecraft’s engines in space and conduct onboard tests, which will help pave the way for future Starships to refuel each other in orbit.
The Starship entered orbit on its planned trajectory and then made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean more than an hour after launch.
SpaceX has been developing Starship prototypes since 2018, with early tests involving only short jumps from the upper stage, also known as Starship.
Third time lucky?
The first “integration” test will take place in April 2023. SpaceX was forced to blow up Starship within minutes of launch after the two stages failed to separate.
The rocket disintegrated into a fireball and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, sending up a cloud of dust over a town miles away.
A second test in November 2023 went slightly better: the booster separated from the spacecraft, but then both exploded in the ocean in what the company euphemistically called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
The FAA concluded its investigation into the incident last month after identifying 17 corrective actions that SpaceX needed to take.
SpaceX’s “rapid iterative development” strategy has paid off for the company in the past: notably, its Falcon 9 rocket has become a workhorse for NASA and the commercial sector, its Crew Dragon spacecraft carries astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, Its Starlink internet satellite constellation now covers dozens of countries.
But time is running out for SpaceX to prepare for NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon in 2026 using a modified Starship as a lander.
Not only does SpaceX have to prove it can safely launch, fly and land Starship, it ultimately has to prove it can send multiple “Starship tankers” into orbit to refuel a main Starship to continue its journey to the moon journey of.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
