SpaceX will test its massive Starship rocket on its third test flight.
The next mission, which could be launched on March 14, will be markedly different from its two predecessors, with more numerous and more ambitious goals for the two-stage, 400-foot (122-meter) spacecraft.
Among the audacious goals are “opening and closing Starship's payload door, demonstrating fuel transfer through the upper stage's shore stage, the first-ever Raptor engine relight while in space, and a controlled re-entry of Starship,” SpaceX wrote in an article. Task description.
“It will also fly on a new trajectory, with the spacecraft targeting a landing in the Indian Ocean,” the company added. “This new flight path enables us to try new technologies such as engine combustion in space while maximizing public safety.”
Related: SpaceX refuels the huge Starship rocket in the third test launch (photos)
SpaceX is developing spacecraft to help humanity settle on the Moon and Mars, as well as performing a variety of other exploration work. The stainless steel vehicle, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, is designed to be completely and quickly reusable.
The spacecraft has flown two test missions so far, both from SpaceX's Starbase site in south Texas. Both were intended to send the upper stage most of the distance around Earth, with the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii targeted. But that did not happen on both occasions.
On the first flight, in April 2023, the spacecraft's two stages failed to separate as planned, and the spacecraft was intentionally blown up about four minutes after launch.
Starship performed much better on the second flight, which launched in November 2023. The vehicle achieved nominal first-stage engine burn, and its two stages separated on schedule. The upper stage exploded about eight minutes after launch while venting liquid oxygen, but that likely wouldn't happen on an operational flight, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk.
“Normally we wouldn't have this liquid oxygen if we had a payload,” Musk said in a company update. SpaceX deployed on X “So, ironically, if it had a payload, it would have reached orbit.”
SpaceX is targeting March 14 for the third test flight, but that date is not set at all, as the company notes in the mission description.
The US Federal Aviation Administration recently ended its investigation into what happened on the Starship flight in November, but the agency has not yet granted a license for a third launch, as far as we know.
“Extreme travel lover. Bacon fanatic. Troublemaker. Introvert. Passionate music fanatic.”
More Stories
Here's ABC's fall 2024 TV schedule
Princeton physicists unlock secrets of kinetic magnetism
Supergirl's release date is June 2026