The Starship system awaits a second attempt at a test flight – News

It will be the very first flight test of this assembly and it will be a so-called transatmospheric flight, which means that it is not a space flight to orbit.

The Starship assembly consists of a huge Super Heavy launch vehicle and a second stage, the Starship spacecraft. In the test flight, billionaire Elon Musk’s company SpaceX will specifically use the Booster 7 and Ship 24 prototypes.

Although both stages are to be reusable in the future, the current test is to be their only flight. Instead of the controlled landing known for SpaceX’s other first stages — Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy — both parts will hit the ocean.

Starship measures 120 meters in total, making it the largest system of its kind built to date. It is also the most powerful space transport system – the carrier is powered by 33 Raptor rocket engines, the spacecraft by six of the same units.

It will currently fly unmanned, but according to SpaceX, it will be able to carry up to 100 people, possibly a large amount of cargo and equipment in the future. The goal of these vessels is then to be Mars, but the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) nevertheless wants to use the modified Starship for the planned journey of two astronauts to the surface of the moon, namely for their landing.

Now, ideally, SpaceX expects the Starship to lift off from the launch pad at Starbase and head east across the Gulf of Mexico. The Super Heavy carrier stage should operate for two minutes and 49 seconds from ignition, after which both stages will separate. The upper half, the Starship spacecraft, will then be powered by its own engines for the next six minutes and 23 seconds.

At that time, it should already fly over the Caribbean at a height of 100 kilometers above the earth’s surface, i.e. roughly at the so-called Kármán boundary, which determines where the Earth’s atmosphere ends and outer space begins.

SpaceX hopes the second stage of the Starship will circle nearly the entire Earth and land in the Pacific Ocean north of the Hawaiian Islands 90 minutes after launch. After separating from the second stage, the Super Heavy will turn back toward the Texas coast, where it will attempt a vertical descent to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

Before Monday’s test, businessman Musk warned that the first flight around the Earth could be accompanied by difficulties or delays.

The countdown to the start and, in the case of a smooth course, the start itself can be watched live.