SpaceX
SpaceX lit engines on Wednesday in both the first and second stages of its Starship launch system, signaling it’s getting closer to a test flight of the massive rocket later this year.
On Monday night at 5:20 PM local time in South Texas, engineers ignited a single Raptor engine on the Super Heavy booster that serves as the rocket’s first stage. This marks the first time the company has ever conducted a static fire test of the booster, which will eventually be powered by 33 Raptor rocket engines.
About three hours later, on a separate mountain at its “Starbase” facility in Texas, SpaceX ignited two engines on the top stage of the rocket’s Starship. The company later shared a short video on Twitter of the apparently successful test.
These two static fires, intended to test the pipelines of the missile’s liquid oxygen and methane propellant systems, are significant. It’s the first static fire tests of 2022 at the South Texas launch site. In addition, these vehicles — dubbed Booster 7 and Ship 24 to reflect their prototype numbers — could be the vehicles that SpaceX is actually using for an orbital launch attempt. Finally, this is the first time SpaceX has tested its new version of the Raptor engine, Raptor 2, on a rocket.
These tests follow a year-long development work by SpaceX to mature the design of the Starship vehicle from a prototype used for short jumps of 10 km to a vehicle that can climb above Earth’s atmosphere and then make its fiery return. can survive to Earth. surface of the planet. This work involved an evolving design of control valves and heat shield tiles to protect the vehicle. SpaceX also had to build a series of Super Heavy prototypes before reaching a design believed to be airworthy.
Booster 7’s successful test on Tuesday follows a failed “spin-start” test four weeks ago that resulted in an anomaly that sent the rocket back to the company’s high-rise facility for some repair work. That problem appears to have been resolved and the hardware salvaged.
In addition to verifying the hardware, Tuesday’s separate tests should also provide confidence in the performance of ground systems used to fuel and support the rocket during launch.
Since the Raptor engines on both Super Heavy and the Starship’s top stage have not experienced a significant anomaly, it’s likely that SpaceX will gradually fire more engines on each vehicle over the coming days and weeks.
These vehicles are experimental and can fail. SpaceX uses an iterative design process to achieve a flight-ready version of Starship. To that end, the company has already nearly completed “Ship 25” at a high-rise facility about 2 miles from its South Texas launch site and is working on elements of Ships 26 and 27. Meanwhile, Booster 8 is coming up in another large bay as work progresses. on Booster 9 and 10.
SpaceX has yet to receive a Starship launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration, but earlier this summer it received critical regulatory approval from the federal agency, indicating it will eventually be able to obtain a license. So given the start of a test campaign, it seems possible that a launch attempt is possible this year – maybe even likely.
