by The most powerful rocket system that has ever been constructed is for his next test on the way to a version of the vehicle that is in the center of a series of explosive failures and failures.
SpaceX said it was aimed at starting his starship megarock on a one-hour test flight, changing until Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET and the downturn time. According to the company, a webcast of the event is expected to begin around 30 minutes earlier.
The prototype of the non -published Starship prototype will follow a flight schedule similar to the last three missions and aim to complete the test goals that were not driven during these tests, all of which ended prematurely. SpaceX debut the current generation of Starship vehicles in January after discussing a clean selection of test missions in 2024 with a slightly reduced version of the rocket as part of the rocket.
Since this debut, however, the vehicle has exploded twice via populated islands east of Florida, which created debris, entering the streets in Turks and Caicoses and washing on the banks of the Bahaham Islands. The spaceship was also out of control when his last test flight in May went to his landing site in the Indian Ocean.
In June, a spaceship area exploded in June, which exploded abruptly at an engine testing stand in the company’s start and development facilities in South Texas – and damage to the SpaceX infrastructure.
These setbacks aroused long-time SpaceX critics and attracted new ones, including the Mexican government, which has threatened legal steps against the company about reported debris. In a statement on Thursday, the British government also announced that it had “worked closely with partners of the US government to protect the security of its foreign areas, including Turks and Caicos.
The mixture of breakdowns this year also has space for space flight experts and stakeholders who emphasized that the United States rides a lot with the later success of the starship, including plans to return humans to the moon.
And this success is not guaranteed.
“It is very, very difficult to predict how this will end,” said Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut and SpaceX consultant, the professor of astronautic engineering at the University of Southern California.
“I think it could never work, or it could revolutionize our entire future of the activities in space – and geopolitics,” he added, referring to the US target to think about China in a new space race in China.
Why SpaceX is allowed to fly again
A cloud of exhaust paths from a starship rocket after a test start from South Texas on May 27th. – Sergio Flores/AFP/Getty Images
SpaceX said that it has implemented changes to the Starship system, which is scheduled to fly this weekend in response to the last failure in the flight in May.
These changes include adaptations to a component that is referred to as fuel diffuser, of which the company believes that it worked incorrectly during the last flight and cause higher pressure to build up in the nasal cone of the starship. It is probably what the vehicle prompted, get out of control, according to a technical overview SpaceX, which was released last week.
Despite the series of the latest problems, the Federal Aviation Administration, which licensed commercial rockets, gave their investigation into SpaceX’s recent misfortune and the plans of the company to fly on Sunday last week.
According to the applicable laws and regulations, the FAA is exclusively commissioned to ensure that commercial rocket companies are not a risk of public property or the security of viewers.
“There are no reports of public injuries or damage to public property. The FAA supervised and accepted the results of the investigation conducted by SpaceX,” said the agency in a statement on August 15. “SpaceX identified correction measures to prevent the event from recurring.”
A long way to
President Donald Trump listens as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on March 11th in Washington, DC, on the southern lawn of the White House. – Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
In his update, SpaceX also made it clear that the version of the Starship, in which so many problems have experienced, will soon be in retirement.
“There are two flights in the current generation, each of which is expanded to expand the envelope to vehicle functions,” said a blog post from the company.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, has already annoyed plans for larger, more ambitious iterations of the vehicle, which would wear even greater and more powerful.
Now it seems to be clear that SpaceX will pursue this scaled version of Starship more than twice as powerful as the NASA rockets that have driven the Apollo Moon landings-whether the current line of Starship prototypes ever brings a successful test flight or not.
“It is very possible that a bigger upgrade could solve the current problem,” said Reisman. “It could also introduce new problems – you never know.”
In particular, the US government has taken several steps that SpaceX could improve in its efforts to accelerate the Starship tests.
In May, the FAA approved the company’s plans to start the Starship up to 25 times a year from Texas from the five that had previously been approved for behaviors.
And at the beginning of this month, President Donald Trump-Dive granted a public and vitriolic loss with Musk in Juni-a Executive Order, which is organized for scaling back block blocks and regulatory supervision for rocket operations in the private sector, including environmental exams.
In the meantime, the operations with every Starship test flight seem to grow because SpaceX races against the clock.
Musk not only wants to send one of the vehicles to Mars on an unpainted flight when the next opportunity arises in 2026, but also the NASA plans to send their astronauts on board one of the vehicles on board one of the vehicles as soon as part of a contract of $ 2.9 billion.
“We made this bet” on Starship, said Janet Petro, who acted as a reigning NASA administrator until July. “They had a hard year, but SpaceX is a fairly intensive and motivated company.”
Petro added that she had “full trust” that SpaceX will refine the design of the Starship and get the vehicle up and running.
Reisman, the former SpaceX consultant, said he was also hopeful, but less safe.
“SpaceX has made an existential gambling for spaceships,” said Reisman, adding that he led worried about the rate of the Progressrate SpaceX with a spaceship. “They pour an enormous amount of money and resources into its development … but at some point the laws of financial physics still apply.”
What SpaceX wants to achieve with flight 10
The Starship Flight 8 Booster returns the launch pad on March 6th to the South Texas facilities of SpaceX. – Brandon Bell/Getty Images
If everything is called according to plan with the next flight of Starship, which is referred to as flight 10, the 400-foot starts high starship start system from SpaceX in South Texas and climbs off the waters off the coast.
The lower part of the rocket system, which gives the initial power outbreak when the upswing, as a super heavy, will try to make a controlled splash on the coast of Texas on the coast of Texas.
For this mission, the company will not try to repeat its dramatic, super heavy “chopsticks”, in which the rocket amplifier is back in the arms of the tower from which it started. SpaceX said that instead, the booster would bring through a number of tests to bring the vehicle to its limits to “collect real performance data” that could imitate a future mission that is not as planned.
In the meantime, the spaceship is flying out of the upper spaceship, which transports a day with freight or convoys from astronauts, but only transported Dummy satellites for this mission, further through space.
During the flight, the Starship will try to use the eight satellite simulators and to recover one of the rocket engines of the spacecraft in space. SpaceX has not managed to meet these two milestones in the last three test missions.
Even if this V2 starship prototype meets a similarly sick fate, SpaceX is probably again a success.
The company employs a technical philosophy entitled “Rapid Iterative Development”, in which the striving for relatively cheap prototypes in frequent test missions about extensive soil tests or other less risky simulations is highlighted.
Due to its unique development approach, SpaceX is known to include fiery breakdowns. The company has explained that even failed test flights help engineers to improve the design of the Starship – faster than when SpaceX used alternative technical approaches.
“Every lesson, both through flight” in the current generation, there are two flights, each of which is expanded to expand the envelope to vehicle capacities if we are fully and quickly reusable, reliable rocket. “
SpaceX’s development approach has often been considered risky and brazen, has served the company well in the past.
Rarely has one of the company’s rockets as soon as he leaves the development phase and is in operation. The company’s human space flight balance with Falcon 9 Rockets was flawless.
And if the Starship works at some point, Reisman said that it was not just SpaceX – or even NASA – that benefits.
“The entire space industry hopes and relies on the working ship, because when it reaches its promise, it will also be a revolution in affordability,” said Reisman. “I think there are causes of optimism and pessimism – and I think it is very, very difficult to predict how this will end.”
Register for CNNS Wonder Theory Science Newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific progress and much more.
More CNN messages and newsletter create an account at CNN.com
