by SpaceX launched the seventh test flight of its Starship rocket on Thursday, as Elon Musk’s company looks to further develop the mammoth vehicle, including with a crucial test of satellite deployment.
The company launched Starship shortly after 5:30 p.m. ET from its private “Starbase” facility near Brownsville, Texas.
A few minutes later, the rocket’s “Super Heavy” carrier landed back at the launch site, marking SpaceX’s second successful “catch” during a flight.
However, Elon Musk’s rocket company then lost communication with the rocket.
There are no people on board the Starship flight. However, SpaceX is flying ten “Starlink simulators” in the rocket’s payload bay and plans to attempt to deploy the satellite-like objects in space sometime. This is an important test of the rocket’s capabilities as SpaceX needs Starship to deploy its much larger and heavier upcoming generation of Starlink satellites.
While SpaceX hasn’t specified what the Starlink simulators are made of, mass simulators are commonly used in rocket vehicle development and are often simple structures made of metal or concrete that weigh about as much as the object in question. Since the rocket does not reach orbit, the simulators are expected to follow a similar trajectory to the rocket and burn up upon re-entry.
The launch plan called for Starship to reach space and then circle halfway around the Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and landing in the Indian Ocean about an hour after launch.
The rocket’s carrier returned after separating from Starship and landed on the arms of the company’s launch tower – a feat the company achieved on its fifth flight but failed on its sixth.
As with every previous flight, SpaceX wants to further advance development by evaluating additional capabilities of the Starship, including testing its heat shield tiles and the trajectory of its intense reentry.
Starship is crucial to the company’s plans, even though the company is valued at $350 billion and already has a dominant position in the space industry.
Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully loaded on the Super Heavy booster, Starship stands 403 feet tall and is approximately 30 feet in diameter. SpaceX has flown the entire Starship rocket system in six spaceflight tests since April 2023, with ever-increasing frequency.
The rocket’s journey into space begins with the Super Heavy booster, which is 232 feet high. At its base are 33 Raptor engines that produce a combined 16.7 million pounds of thrust — about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust from NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which launched for the first time in 2022.
The 171-foot-tall spacecraft itself has six Raptor engines – three for use in Earth’s atmosphere and three for operation in the vacuum of space.
The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. It takes more than 10 million pounds of fuel to launch the entire system.
The spacecraft flying during this launch, called “Ship 33,” is also a version of the second-generation vehicle called “Block 2.”
SpaceX noted that “significant improvements” to this vehicle include changes to the flaps on the vehicle’s nose, redesigns of the propulsion system to increase performance, an improved flight computer, 30 cameras mounted along the vehicle to monitor the rocket, and a reinforced heat shield.
The Starship system is fully reusable and is intended to become a new method for transporting cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also crucial to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX received a multi-billion dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a manned lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis lunar program.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
