The last test flight in May of SpaceX’s Starship rocket was largely successful, demonstrating that most of the major changes in the design, known as Version 3, had improved reliability and performance.
However, the May flight experienced enough problems to warrant a do-over. The bottom booster stage crashed into the Gulf of Mexico instead of slowing to a hover to simulate a landing, while one of the engines on the upper-stage spacecraft shut down early.
If today’s planned test flight, the 13th for Starship, accomplishes its objectives, SpaceX will be able to move on to the next set of more challenging objectives for Starship: entering orbit around Earth, returning the upper-stage spacecraft to Texas and catching it on the launch tower as it has done with the booster.
When is the launch, and how can I watch it?
SpaceX is aiming to launch Starship at 6:45 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday from its Starbase site in southern Texas, outside Brownsville. If weather or technical problems cause a delay, the countdown can be pushed back by up to 90 minutes.
SpaceX plans to provide live coverage of the test flight on its website, starting about 45 minutes before liftoff.
What is Starship?
Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. The 408-foot-tall vehicle consists of an upper-stage spacecraft, also called Starship and often shortened to Ship, and a powerful booster stage with 33 engines, known as the Super Heavy.
Mr. Musk has said that it will be fully reusable, with both stages returning to the launch site to be caught by giant mechanical arms.
If SpaceX pulls off this vision, Starship could revolutionize the space industry, enabling launches of bigger, heavier satellites and other cargo at lower costs.
Will this Starship go into orbit, finally?
By design, all of the Starship test flights so far have followed a suborbital trajectory. Although the rockets reached speeds essentially fast enough to enter orbit, they traveled along elliptical trajectories that intersected with Earth’s atmosphere. That way, if something went wrong, the rockets harmlessly burned up over the ocean.
This 13th test flight will also be suborbital. If that goes well, then the 14th could be the first to go into orbit around Earth.
What will happen during this test flight?
After lifting off from Texas, the upper stage of the rocket will travel halfway around the world and re-enter the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, where it will simulate a landing over the water. Since there is no landing pad there, the rocket will inevitably tip over and explode when the remaining methane fuel in the rocket ignites.
While at the top of its trajectory in space, Starship will deploy, for the first time, 20 functioning, next-generation Starlink satellites. Earlier flights released dummy versions to test the deployment mechanism, which resembles a large Pez dispenser, pushing out the satellites one by one.
The Starlink satellites will extend their solar arrays and antennas and then attempt to connect to the rest of the Starlink constellation via laser communications. Even if it works, it will not work for long. The satellites will be traveling along the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and will burn up in the atmosphere about 20 minutes after deployment.
But before their demise, six of the Starlink satellites have cameras that will scan Starship’s heat shield as it re-enters the atmosphere. The images will provide data on the performance of the heat shield.
Will SpaceX catch the booster this time?
The most thrilling breakthrough of the Version 2 Starship was during the fifth test flight, when the Super Heavy booster returned to Starbase and was caught in midair by two large mechanical arms on the launch tower. SpaceX repeated that feat during the seventh and eighth test flights.
On this test flight, however, the booster will not return to the launchpad. Instead, it will simulate a landing over the Gulf of Mexico about 20 miles offshore.
During a future test flight, SpaceX wants to catch not only the booster, but also the Starship’s upper-stage spacecraft after it returns from orbit.
Why is this important for SpaceX and NASA?
NASA hired SpaceX to provide a version of Starship to take its astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon. But work on Starship has taken longer than Mr. Musk and SpaceX originally promised.
For the moon mission, SpaceX needs to demonstrate several technological firsts. That includes conducting multiple Starship launches over a short period of time, because the lunar lander version of Starship will need to have its propellant tanks refilled before leaving low-Earth orbit.
Transferring ultracold liquid methane and liquid oxygen between two spacecrafts in the weightlessness of space has not yet been demonstrated.
Those more ambitious goals cannot be attempted until SpaceX shows it can reliably launch Starship to orbit.
A successful test flight could also shore up investor confidence in SpaceX, which debuted on the stock market in June in the largest initial public offering ever. Its stock price shot upward to a height of $225.64, a jump of 67 percent, a few days later, but it has slumped since. On Wednesday, it dropped below $135, its original offering price, before closing slightly above that mark.
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