Elon Musk tries again: there is a new launch of the largest rocket in the world, followed live on the NASA and Spacex web channels
In a few hours, on -board and weather systems permittingSpacex aims to launch his Testing mission number nine (flight-9)that after the two failures that took place at the beginning of the year it could be the decisive one and should take place from the test site Starbase near the beach of Boca Chicain southern Texas.
As the name suggests, this will be the ninth test flight of Elon Musk’s gigantic rocket, but will be the first to try to reuse the gigantic Super Heavy Boosterthe first stadium of Starship. Recall that flights number 7 and 8, respectively happened in January and March, Spacex had successfully reported his super Heavy Booster on Earth, but the “Ship” stadium of the rocket had spoiled shortly after take off.
Now the company tries again, but at the time we write has not yet indicated the exact time window specific for the flight, which could place the launch at any time Between 19:30 and 20 hour of Texasthat is to say Between one and two in the morning in Italy. Meanwhile, the local authorities of the area around the Boca Chica base have announced the Closing of the roads until 29 Maysuggesting possible postponements of the operations.
From a technical point of view, after flight 7, this first stadium saw The replacement of four of its 33 raptor engines And different changes to control systems flight parameters, those who in the past had caused false alarms.
The gigantic rocket, once assembled, is about 122 meters long and is designed to be completely reusable and allow travel in Low terrestrial orbiton the Moon (NASA chose it to land the Astronauts of Artemis in 2027) and, finally, in the future to reach Mars.
The Flight launch 9 will always be broadcast live on the free webcast from midnight today, starting from 30 minutes before take -off. The site Nasasspaceflight.com will instead offer its own Live streaming on YouTube and will include a Pre-launch program with images of the refueling and preparation of the Go-Caro.
The mission is expected Hard just over an hour; The technicians hope to replicate the trajectory of its predecessorflight 8 made in March, before that mission ended with a failure.
In an official press release Spacex described this mission: “The upper stadium of the Starship will be dedicated again to multiple purposes including the deployment of eight Starlink simulators of dimensions similar to next generation Starlink satellites; These will be on the same suborbital trajectory as the Starship and it is expected that they will deactivate at the time of entry into space. The re -ignition of a single raptor engine during the space flight for the correction of the trajectory. But this time the Booster Super Heavy will not try to return to his launch site To be captured by the gigantic feattes of the Mechazilla ramp, but will try a Soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico And he will be dispersed at sea. “
About An hour and a quarter before launch The flight director will check the fuel load, then a T-0: 51: 37 will begin the load of liquid oxygen following T-0: 45: 20 from the load of liquid methane for starship. TO T-0: 35: 52 It will be the turn of Liquid oxygen loading for Super Heavy and T-00: 19: 40 the Raptor engine cooling.
When they miss Three minutes and twenty secondsthe refueling of the spaceship must be completed. At that point the countdown will be 30 secondswhile the “go flight” of the launch director will be a T-10 seconds. The start of the Raptor ignition sequence It will take place three seconds later (T-7 seconds) and therefore there will be the Liftoff, or take -off.
The Booster of this test will also try several flight experiments To collect data on real performance on future mission profiles; This will happen while it is in trajectory towards a landing point off the Gulf of Mexico.
If all goes well, the Booster Super Heavy of flight 9 should land in the Gulf of Mexico just under seven minutes after the launch, with the Useful load deployment test about 18 minutes after take -off And The landing of the starship in the Indian Ocean about 66 minutes after the start of the flight.
