Launch of a giant, second try: SpaceX must try again on Thursday to launch its new Starship rocket, the world’s largest, into space for the first time, destined for trips to the Moon and Mars.
• Also read: Postponement of the first test flight of Starship, the world’s largest rocket
The shooting window will open at 8:28 a.m. local time (1:28 p.m. GMT) until 9:30 a.m. This highly anticipated spectacle is set at SpaceX’s Starbase space facility, located in far south Texas, USA.
On Monday, a first launch attempt was aborted in the final minutes of the countdown due to a technical problem.
“This is the first flight of a huge, very complex rocket,” said SpaceX boss Elon Musk on Sunday, calling the test “very risky”.
At 120 meters, Starship is larger than both NASA’s new SLS megarocket (98 m), which launched for the first time in November, and the legendary Saturn V, the Apollo lunar program’s rocket (111 m).
The spacecraft’s launch thrust is also expected to be about twice that of those two launch vehicles – making it the most powerful in the world.
This black and silver behemoth has never flown in its full configuration before, with its super powerful first stage, dubbed Super Heavy, fitted with no fewer than 33 engines.
Only the vehicle’s second stage, the Starship spacecraft, which gives its name to the entire rocket, conducted suborbital tests (at an altitude of about 10 km).
It was he who was selected by NASA to become the lander in a modified version of the Artemis 3 mission, which must officially bring astronauts back to the lunar surface in 2025 for the first time in more than half a century.
fear of explosion
On Thursday, the flight plan is as follows: About three minutes after takeoff, Super Heavy must detach and fall back into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The Starship ship must then turn on its six engines and continue its ascent on its own, to an altitude of more than 150 km. After making a little less than one rotation of the Earth for about an hour, it must fall back into the Pacific Ocean.
But doing all those steps on the first test flight would be a feat. The main goal is to collect as much data as possible in order to improve the following prototypes.
Elon Musk was keen to tone down expectations, saying that reaching orbit on the first try was unlikely.
He was content with the hope that the launch pad would not be destroyed by the explosion of Super Heavy’s engines upon ignition.
“My biggest wish is that we please… get off the launch pad before anything goes wrong,” he said. If it “melts” it could take “months” to rebuild, he added.
Slash Prices
The rocket already has customers: Starship’s first manned flight is said to be with American billionaire Jared Isaacman.
Another billionaire, Japanese Yusaku Maezawa, and American Dennis Tito (the first space tourist in history) have also announced that they will be boarding to orbit the moon.
The spacecraft must be able to carry up to 150 tons of cargo into orbit. For comparison, the Falcon 9 rocket that SpaceX is launching at breakneck speed can only carry a little over 22 tons into low Earth orbit.
But Starship’s real innovation is that it needs to be fully reusable — something Elon Musk says is achievable in “two or three years.”
In this first test, no attempt is made to recover either stage of the rocket. But eventually, Super Heavy must come back and rest at his launch tower, which is equipped with two arms to immobilize him.
The Starship spaceship must return to earth with retro rockets. This maneuver had been attempted several times in 2020 and 2021. After several explosions on landing, a prototype finally landed successfully.
“We designed Starship to be as close to flight operations as possible,” SpaceX No. 2 Gwynne Shotwell explained in February.
The idea of a reusable launcher, Elon Musk’s grand strategy, is to lower prices. Each Starship flight can only end up costing “a few million” dollars, he claims.
An imperative for the billionaire, who estimates that humans will need hundreds of Starship rockets to have any chance of becoming a multiplanetary species. His ultimate goal is to establish an autonomous colony on Mars.