SpaceX Starship rocket launching fourth test spaceflight

SpaceX is about to aim a fourth test flight of its Starship rocket on Thursday, as the corporate looks to push development of the mammoth vehicle past recent milestones.

Elon Musk’s company has a two hour window, from 8 a.m. ET to 10 a.m. ET, by which to launch Starship from its Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas. If SpaceX is unable to launch inside that window for weather or technical reasons, the corporate will postpone the try to a later date.

Assuming the launch goes in accordance with plan, Starship would reach space after which travel halfway across the Earth before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down within the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft, atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket, lifts off on its third launch from the corporate’s Boca Chica launchpad on an uncrewed test flight, near Brownsville, Texas, U.S. March 14, 2024. 

Cheney Orr | Reuters

SpaceX has flown the total Starship rocket system on three spaceflight tests thus far, with launches in April 2023, November and March. Each of the test flights have achieved more milestones than the last, but each result destroyed the rocket before the flight’s end.

The corporate’s rocket flew the furthest in its third test flight, allowing SpaceX to check recent capabilities including opening and shutting the payload door once in space – which could be how the rocket deploys payloads comparable to a satellites on future missions – and transferring fuel in the course of the flight in a NASA demonstration.

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The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and goals to turn into a recent approach to flying cargo and folks beyond Earth. The rocket can also be critical to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to make use of Starship as a crewed lunar lander as a part of NASA’s Artemis moon program.

SpaceX heavily emphasizes an approach of constructing “on what we have learned from previous flights” in its approach to develop Starship. The corporate says its strategy focuses on “recursive improvement” to the rocket, where even test flights with fiery outcomes represent progress toward its goal of a totally reusable rocket that may deliver people to the moon and Mars.

Musk last yr said he expected the corporate to spend about $2 billion on Starship development in 2023.

Goals for fourth flight

SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket is ready for a 3rd launch from the corporate’s Boca Chica launchpad on an uncrewed test flight, near Brownsville, Texas, U.S. March 13, 2024. 

Joe Skipper | Reuters

There can be no people on board this attempt to achieve space with Starship. The corporate’s leadership has previously emphasized that SpaceX expects to fly lots of of Starship missions before the rocket launches with any crew.

SpaceX can be seeking to surpass the third test flight’s milestones. The corporate wrote in an update on its website that the fourth flight “turns our focus from achieving orbit to demonstrating the flexibility to return and reuse Starship and Super Heavy.”

“The first objectives can be executing a landing burn and soft splashdown within the Gulf of Mexico with the Super Heavy booster, and achieving a controlled entry of Starship,” SpaceX wrote.

The corporate says it’s accomplished quite a lot of software and hardware changes to Starship, aimed toward increasing the rocket’s reliability.

The rocket

The Super Heavy booster, which stands 232 feet tall, is what begins the rocket’s journey to space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million kilos of thrust – about double the 8.8 million kilos of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which launched for the primary time in 2022.