SpaceX launches a giant super heavy rocket on critical test flight

Tuesday two days late, SpaceX launched its huge super-star, promising what seemed to be a remarkably successful test flight as a result of Three consecutive failures Earlier this year.

While the reintegration of heating damaged a protective “skirt” around the engines of the vessel on the upper scene, as well as the cast iron partially of a control pane near its hinge, the vehicle remained under control and made a splash supplied in the Indian ocean as expected.

“Splashdown has confirmed! Congratulations to the whole SpaceX team for a tenth fascinating flight test!” SpaceX said in a post on X.

Earlier, the first super heavy step also occurred as expected, stimulating the vessel of the lower atmosphere, then turning to the Côte du Gulf du Texas for Splashdown.

In a test, one of the three engines used during a fed descent was deliberately closed, but the booster compensated and the rocket, falling the first that the tail, fell into the Gulf as expected.

SpaceX workers in Texas and California have applauded and applauded major stages throughout the test flight of an hour and six minutes, expressing their obvious exaltation after three consecutive catastrophic failures leading to the 10th flight of Tuesday.

The mission began when the 33 raptor engines fed by the super heavy methane broke out with a roar of the earth and an ignited exhaust rush at 7:30 pm, majestically pushing the 40 -storey rocket of the 40 -storey rocket of the Starbase installation of SpaceX on the coast of Texas Gulf.

A Sunday launch trial was canceled due to problems with ground equipment, and a second attempt on Monday was blocked by cloudy weather.

But it was clear on Tuesday when the rocket, the most powerful ever built, presented a spectacular spectacle accelerating towards the space at the top of some 16 million pounds of push – more of the double of the power of the spatial launch system of NASA, Moon Rocket and the legendary Saturn 5 of the agency.

Given the unequal assessment of the Super Starhip to date, the concern has grown up that a variant of the launder of the Moon of the vessel under construction for NASA cannot be perfected in time for a landing planned in 2027 and perhaps not before the Chinese plant their own flag on the moon at the end of the decade.

The success of Tuesday flight will not lend these concerns – a multitude of technical obstacles remains – but it was undoubtedly a shot in the arm for the founder of the Elon Musk company and the SpaceX labor.

The initial stages of the test flight went well. The 230 feet high -handed super heavy booster propelled the upper stadium stadium from the lower atmosphere, separated, turned around and flew away for a splash off the Côte du Gulf du Texas as planned.

The scene is designed to get back to its launch portico for an outdoor capture by giant mechanical arms, a feat carried out three times during previous tests.

But for Tuesday flight, the booster targeted the gulf while the flight controllers monitored how it worked when an engine used for landing was deliberately stopped to simulate a breakdown. The scene seemed to occur gently to splash.

The upper stage of starship, on the other hand, has gone to a subjectory suborbital as expected, an important step that the three previous test flights failed to reach.

Over the next 38 minutes, the starship successfully deployed eight Satellite Starlink simulators to test the PEZ -type deployment mechanism and briefly rekindle one of the six Raptor engines of the rocket to check its ability to restart in space.

Then, during the return to the lower atmosphere, new thermal shield tiles were tested while the cameras and other sensors watched how the fierce school heat affected various structures.

A protective skirt around the base of the engine compartment seemed to separate when the heating intensified and at least a flap, used to control the orientation of the vessel in the atmosphere, seemed to melt partially near a hinge connecting it to the fuselage.

But it seemed to work normally throughout, turning both directions on the computer command while the flight computer has executed a series of tests.

Like the super heavy booster, the starship is designed to get back to a launch portico for the capture of the air. But SpaceX has not yet tried to return to the site with a vessel, and the rocket has rather descended to a splash on target in the Indian Ocean.

The company positioned a buoy of cameras in the area before the launch, and it captured ephemeral views of the large rocket, its skin was praised as planned during the start of the school year, first falling to a rocket landing on rockets. He then broke and exploded, but that was expected with an landing on the water.

A successful test flight was essential for SpaceX, which wants to bugs as soon as possible and flying the rocket on operational missions to launch dozens of star links and other satellites and finally to transport settlers and equipment to Mars.

Test flights are also essential to NASA, which counts on a modified version of the starship to transport two astronauts to the surface of the Moon from 2027.

Because the rocket is fully reusable, the landing Moon will use all its propellant which will only reach orbit in the low earth. To send it to the moon, SpaceX will have to launch 10 to 20 flights from super heavy oil trees to fill in the landing tanks with the necessary propeller.

He will also have to counter the natural warming of liquid oxygen and methane fuel which, otherwise, will “boil” the propellants, transforming into a gas which must be evacuated over edge.

No class rocket in orbit has never demonstrated the type of rapid launch rate that will be necessary, or made the autonomous transfer of thousands of gallons of cryogenic propellers from one rocket to another in the environment as a weightlessness of the space in the middle of extreme temperature jumps.

A single launch failure would certainly lead to the cancellation of a lunar mission while a survey has taken its course. And an explosive failure in orbit on low earth would cause a huge cloud of dangerous debris.

A safe landing on the moon with a 16 -storey rocket presents its own challenges, the least of which is the possibility of uneven terrain or a loose soil that could cause a point. And astronauts will have to mount an external platform towards the surface at 100 feet approximately under the upper crew section.

Most observers believe that SpaceX will eventually overcome these obstacles. The question is the following: can the company do it in time for an landing on the moon in 2027? Otherwise, will the rocket be ready to transport astronauts to the moon before the Chinese plant their own flag on the surface by the end of the decade?

CBS News interviewed several and former officials of NASA and entrepreneurs and engineers in recent weeks who have unanimously agreed that an landing in 2027 could not be carried out safely with current HLS architecture. And none of them said they thought that NASA could get there before the Chinese without a radical change of course.

“I think the people you have spoken to are correct. We are not going to go ahead and get a vessel equipped with the moon by 2030, in no case,” said a senior engineer who worked on the Artemis program. “This does not mean that they will never get there. It does not mean that architecture could not work. But it is simply a technical jump to accomplish in the short time that we have.”