The eleventh test flight of Starship, Elon Musk’s great bet to conquer space has fulfilled its objective. SpaceX has launched a test flight of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, to validate some processes that will allow it to use reusable technology in the future, which will drastically reduce launch costs. Starship has spent just over 65 minutes in the sky to complete its mission. “We passed the return test and all the experiments we had… with an impressive splashdown,” .
After they questioned SpaceX’s ability to carry out its great space project, last August, on the tenth flight, Starship of the test. The eleventh rocket launched this Monday served to test the reliability of the project.
The flight launched this Monday is not manned nor has commercial interest, but it is relevant to validate various technical tests, such as the massive launch of satellites into space.
The 121-meter rocket is made up of the Super Heavy booster and the ship, with which SpaceX wants to achieve an efficient dynamic in which both parts can be reused in future missions and reduce costs in their efforts to return to the Moon with astronauts and later reach Mars.
The Super Heavy booster is equipped with 24 reusable Raptor engines. The Starship spacecraft has eight Starlink satellite simulators, which have been launched abroad.
Another essential objective of the flight test, which lasted just over an hour, is to measure the dynamics of the vehicle in the real world as the engines are turned off during the transition between the different phases. That is, the correct execution of the engine turning on and off processes between the two parts of the rocket and the different phases of launch, undocking and entry into the atmosphere.
The Starship launch occurred around 7:20 p.m. local time at the SpaceX Starbase facilities in Boca Chica (Texas). After sending the Starship phase into space, Super Heavy returned approximately seven minutes later for a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico.
One of the critical moments was when the Super Heavy turned off its engines and the Starship turned on its own to proceed with the undocking, thus approving one of the phases of the experiment. During this maneuver, screams were heard and
Among the critical maneuvers that this mission had to support is the controlled landing in the ocean. The engine configuration on landing will also be validated. The flight must validate the operation of the restart in space: the restart of one of the Raptor engines will be tested in microgravity conditions and thermal resistance tests. The company has removed several pieces of the Starship’s heat shield to evaluate the behavior of vulnerable areas during atmospheric reentry.
that the plan was to “demonstrate a unique landing engine configuration planned for use in the next generation of Super Heavy.” “Will attempt this while en route to an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America [sic] and will not return to the launch site for capture,” he added.
The rocket has traveled more than 26,400 kilometers per hour. After 20 minutes of launch, a large grille deployed on the side of the vehicle and began to eject false satellites.
One of the company’s spokespersons explained during the broadcast that when Starship is operational, it will carry approximately 60 Starlink satellites at a time. “Starship will deploy Starlink’s most advanced V3 satellites, adding 60 terabits per second of capacity to the network per launch,” said the presenter of the SpaceX live broadcast. “That’s 20 times more than what each Falcon 9 launch generates today. Just incredible.”
The descent has been more abrupt because SpaceX explains that they have removed several thermal plates, useful for entering the atmosphere, but engineers are also looking for possible failures.
The Starship managed to reach space at the end of May, before exploding for the third consecutive time. He did not do it, as in the two previous tests, but much later over the Indian Ocean. A few weeks later, in June, he was performing a routine test.
