SpaceX Reprogram the Test Flight of the Super Heavy-Starship after problems with the ground systems

After three consecutive catastrophic flight failures, SpaceX has prepared a huge super heavy-starship rocket for the launch Sunday evening from the Côte du Gulf du Texas in order to test various improvements and deliberately emphasize the vehicle to find out more about its capacities.

The test flight n ° 10 was to start at 7:30 p.m. from the SPACEX Starbase flight and manufacturing plant and the team was pumping liquid oxygen and methane in the 40 -storey rocket when the company announced cleaning.

“We are withdrawing from the tenth flight of the starship today to have time to solve a problem with the ground systems,” said the company on X. SpaceX later announced that another one hour launch window would open at 7:30 p.m. Hae on Monday.

The flight plan provided for the super heavy propellant 30 feet wide and 230 feet high, generating more than 16 million pounds of thrust, to propel the ship out of the low dense atmosphere before it falls, turns and heads towards the coast.

During three of the nine previous test flights, the propellant stolen to its launch ramp where giant mechanical arms on the service portico extracted the descending rocket of the tunes. This time, due to the planned tests, the super heavy had to crash into the Gulf, but it never took off.

SpaceX had previously declared that the main objectives of the recall test were focused on landing. One of the three central engines used for the final landing phase was going to be “intentionally disabled to collect data on the capacity of a central ring aid engine to be landing,” said the company on its website.

The propellant would then use two engines towards the end of the descent and hover briefly before falling back into the Gulf.

The 160 -foot starship stars, on the other hand, propelled by six raptor engines, would have directed towards a suborbital trajectory transporting it to the other end of the world before a back -to -school first, a return vertically and a descent propelled by rocket to bitter in the Indian Ocean.

In addition to the deployment of eight starlink simulator satellites, the starship flight computer had planned to try various other tests, including a restart of the engine in the space, to verify the performance of many upgrades implemented following the failures of the most recent test flights.

Eliminating the giant launcher bugs is essential for SpaceX and its founder Elon Musk, which designed the ultra-lurin rocket to launch thousands of new generation Starlinks and other satellites on the terrestrial orbit and to transport settlers and equipment on Mars one day.

The rocket is also essential for NASA, which pays in SpaceX more than $ 3 billion to develop a modified version of the upper stage of the starship in order to transport Artemis astronauts to the surface of the moon in 2027.

But this flight will require 10 to 20 Super Heavy-Starship flights just to supply the “Human Landing System” landing, or HLS, before being able to go to the moon. The transfer of thousands of gallons of nitrogen and oxygen very cold liquids in space has never been tempted.

And we still do not know how SpaceX plans to control the temperatures of the propellant in order to minimize the quantity which will warm up naturally and transform into gas, which will have to be evacuated over edge. SpaceX has provided no details. Musk promised on Sunday an update to launch on the company’s projects, but the discussion was also canceled without explanation.

Given the number of flights which must be successfully executed to demonstrate the reliability expected by NASA, the target date of 2027 for the establishment of Artemis 3 is considered unrealistic, or even impossible to respect, by numerous observers of the aerospace.

China plans to launch its own astronauts on the moon by 2030. It is not yet known if NASA and SpaceX will return to the Moon using the starship landing before the Chinese plant their own flag on the lunar surface.

Given the size and power of the super heavy vessel (it has a push more than twice that of the current lunar rocket of the NASA spatial launch system, the technical problems during development were not unexpected.

But given the short time that separates us from the first planned landing of Artemis on the Moon by NASA, the problems clearly made the program back down and sowed doubt on the overall architecture of the mission, in particular on the requirement of 10 to 20 flights without problem within a short delay, just to supply the landing for its flight to the Moon.

The first three test flights of the Super Heavy booster and the upper floor of the starship in 2023 and 2024 ended in catastrophic failures, the two floors being destroyed, while they were still attached to each other, or after their separation.

The fourth flight, in June 2024, was generally successful, the Super Heavy returning to a controlled bittering in the Gulf while the starship followed the sub-organization trajectory planned to crash into the Indian Ocean. The ships of the ship were damaged by the back -to -school heating, but also worked as required.

The fifth flight, in October 2024, was marked by a successful return of the super heavy at the gantry of the launch ramp, where giant mechanical arms hung the rocket in the air. The starship, on the other hand, managed a second controlled warning in the Indian Ocean, although he has once again undergone damage to the fins during the start of the school year.

During the sixth flight in integrated flight in November 2024, the Super Heavy attempted another return to the launch site, but it was diverted to a bittering in the Gulf due to damage to the launch on the critical sensors of the capture mechanism of the platform. The starship again flew to a controlled bittering in the Indian Ocean with a minimum of damage to the shutters.

But the following three flights, in January, March and May of this year, ended in catastrophic failures. Two super heavy propellants successfully returned to the launch site, but the most recent broke over the Gulf while he was testing a high angle of attack.

The three vessels were destroyed after catastrophic dysfunctions, including two propellant leaks, a fire on board and multiple engine failures.

In addition to the flight record, another spacecraft was destroyed on the ground when a high -pressure nitrogen tank exploded during an engine test on the Starbase launch site.