​SpaceX is making its third attempt Thursday with the largest spacecraft ever built, Starship, after last year’s launches ended in explosions of two large components; in April and November 2023. SpaceX now has bolder goals and will test more things with Starship and Super Heavy, and wants to do a fuel transfer demonstration.

• HotNew.ro will broadcast LIVE TEXT about the launch.

What is Starship and when will this third test be

13:10 SpaceX announced that the launch will take place no earlier than 2:30 p.m. Weather conditions are 70% favorable.

The launch is scheduled to take place in a 110-minute time “window” starting at 8:00 a.m. ET (2:00 p.m. Romanian time) from a base in Boca Chica, Texas, on March 14.

If all goes well, Thursday’s mission should last 80 minutes. No segment will be recovered for use on subsequent flights.

A SpaceX rocket consists of two parts: the Starship is the spacecraft/booster stage (with six Raptor engines) and the Super Heavy is the booster/main (propulsion) stage with 33 Raptor engines needed to escape Earth’s gravity. The rocket has a height of 120 meters and is the largest and most powerful ever created.

• VIDEO SpaceX launched the world’s largest rocket. The two stages successfully separated, but then one exploded and contact with the other was lost

On Wednesday, the company received the green light to launch from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

In order to be cleared for flight, the FAA required SpaceX to complete 17 corrective actions in areas such as hardware design, updating engine control algorithms and installing new fire protection systems.

SpaceX has been careful to say that these launches are “just” tests, NOT in a lab or on a test bench, but in a real-world environment that will allow the company to learn as much as possible to apply in the future. attempts

Elon Musk’s rocket Flight 3 is also the most ambitious

SpaceX says it will apply what it learned from the previous two attempts to this third attempt, and the third flight has the most goals because it will try several things (including refueling and restarting the Raptor’s engine in space).

• VIDEO SpaceX launched the world’s largest Starship rocket. Both stages of the rocket exploded a few minutes after launch

A new flight path will be used and the Starship segment should return to Earth in a controlled manner after an hour of flight. This is the most ambitious launch of the Starship system in full “formation”. The Super Heavy stage should reach Earth much faster.

The Super Heavy stage is scheduled to attempt to land in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which is also the target for launches in 2023. The main change is that the Starship stage will no longer attempt to “land” in the Pacific Ocean. , but in the Indian Ocean the changes are due to the fact that new things will be tried and the trajectory is different.

Aboard the Starship, while it “orbits” around the planet, a number of first attempts will be made, such as the successful opening and then closing of a hatch that can be used in the future to launch various payloads into space, such as satellites.

One such important demonstration will be the transfer of fuel from one tank to another, as the first test of technologies that in a few years should allow ships to be refueled in space, from a kind of space “refueling stations”.

Starship – What happened to the previous attempts in 2023

In 2023, SpaceX made two attempts with the Starship in its full configuration – both ending in explosions – and hopes to keep the launches closer and closer together.

The previous version of Starship, launched four months ago, failed to reach orbit. Then both stages exploded: the first after three minutes, the second – after eight minutes.

On April 20, 2023, Starship lifted off in full configuration for the first time, but several engines failed and SpaceX ground crews intentionally detonated the rocket using the Flight Termination System (FTS).

Things went a little better on November 18, 2023, with the two stages successfully separating three minutes after launch, but things went wrong after that. The Space Heavy’s stage disintegrated shortly after separating from the Starship, while the Starship’s engines continued to run for a few more minutes, and the shuttle lifted off before exploding.

It’s important that SpaceX conducts as many tests as possible with Starship, eventually getting the rocket into orbit and returning the components to earth for reuse. Starship rockets will play an important role in missions to the moon, including NASA missions, and the delays are starting to put pressure on the established schedule.