The most powerful rocket system ever built is being directed towards the next test. It uses a version of the vehicle at the heart of a series of explosive failures and failures.
SpaceX said it aims to launch Starship Megarocke on a one-hour test flight at 7:30pm on Sunday, although lift-off times may change. The company expects the event’s webcast to begin about 30 minutes in advance.
The undenied spaceship prototype will follow a similar flight plan at the end It was left untried during these tests, aiming to complete three missions and test goals. All of these ended prematurely. SpaceX debuted its current generation of spacecraft vehicles in January after a clean test mission with a slightly scaled version of the rocket in 2024.
However, since its debut, the vehicle has exploded twice on a populated island east of Florida, crashing into Turkish and Caicos roads, creating fragments that will be washed away on the shores of the Bahamas Islands. The spacecraft has gone out of control as it heads to the Indian Ocean landing site on its final test flight in May.
Then, in June, the spacecraft that was tied to an engine test stand at the company’s launch and development facility in South Texas suddenly exploded.
These set-offs have sparked longtime SpaceX critics and attracted new ones, including the Mexican government. The Mexican government is threatening legal action against the company more than reported debris on and around it. British Government He also said in a statement Thursday that he is “working closely with US government partners to protect the safety of overseas territories, including Turkey and Caicos.
This year’s series of accidents raised concerns among spaceflight experts and stakeholders who highlighted that the US is riding on many things in the ultimate success of Starship, including a plan to quickly bring humans back to the moon in 2027.
And its success is not guaranteed.
“It’s extremely difficult to predict how this will end,” said Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut and SpaceX consultant who is a professor of astronaut engineering at the University of Southern California.
“I think it could never work or revolutionize the entire future of activities in space.
SpaceX said it has implemented changes to the spacecraft system that will be flying this weekend in response to the last in-flight obstacles in May.
These changes include adjustments to components known as fuel diffusers. This is believed to have malfunctioned during the last flight, and we believe that higher than expected pressure will accumulate in the spacecraft’s nose cone. According to the technical summary SpaceX released last week, it is likely that the vehicle has gone out of control.
Despite a series of recent issues, the Federal Aviation Administration, which exempts commercial rockets from launch, said last week it had concluded its investigation into SpaceX’s latest accident and approved the company’s plan to fly Sunday’s mission.
Under current laws and regulations, the FAA is solely responsible for ensuring that commercial rocket companies do not pose any risk to public property or the safety of bystanders.
“There have been no reports of public injury or damage to public property. The FAA oversaw and accepts the results of a SpaceX-led investigation,” authorities said in a statement on August 15th. “SpaceX has identified corrective actions to prevent the event from recurring.”
In that update, SpaceX also revealed that the Starship version, which has experienced so many issues, will soon be deprecated.
According to a company blog post, “There are two flights remaining in the current generation, each with a test target designed to expand the envelopes for vehicle functionality.”
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has also already bullied plans for a bigger, more ambitious iteration of a taller, more propellant-carrying vehicle.
Now, it appears that SpaceX will be pursuing a scaled version of Starship, which is more than twice as powerful as the NASA rocket with Apollo Moon Landings.
“There’s a very good chance that a bigger upgrade will solve the current issue,” Reisman said. “It could also introduce new issues – you’ll never know.”
In particular, the US government has taken several steps that can support SpaceX in its efforts to promote Starship testing.
In May, the FAA approved the company’s plan to launch as many as 25 starships a year from Texas.
And earlier this month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order designed to reduce oversight of obstacles and regulations for private sector rocket operations, including environmental reviews, despite his public and violent dropouts with Musk in June.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is competing against the clock, so it appears that the stakes are growing with each test flight of the spacecraft.
Not only does Musk want to send one of the vehicles on an irregular flight to Mars when the next opportunity arises in 2026, but he plans to send astronauts to the astronauts in mid-2027 as part of a $2.9 billion contract.
“We made this bet,” said Janet Petro, who was NASA administrator until July. “They’ve had a tough year, but SpaceX is a pretty intense and motivated company.”
Petro added that SpaceX has “complete confidence” to improve the Starship design and make the vehicle work.
Former SpaceX advisor Reisman said he is hopeful too, but not so sure.
“SpaceX has done existential gambling at Starship,” Reisman said, adding that he is worried about the speed of progress SpaceX is making at Starship. “They are pouring huge amounts of money and resources into their development, but at some point the laws of financial physics still apply.”
If everything goes according to the plan on the next flight of the Starship, known as Flight 10, the 400-foot-high spaceship launch system takes off from SpaceX facility in southern Texas and soars in waters off the coast.
According to SpaceX, there is the bottom part of a rocket system that attempts to do a controlled splashdown from the Texas coast by providing the first power burst at Liftoff, known as Super Heavy.
For this mission, the company will not repeat dramatic, super heavy “chopsticks” landings back to the tower arms fired by the rocket booster. SpaceX said it would instead place boosters on a series of tests designed to push vehicles up to limits “to collect actual performance data” that could mimic future missions that are not going as planned.
Meanwhile, the Upper Starship spacecraft, designed to carry astronaut cargo and fleets, is designed to carry only dummy satellites for this mission, and will continue to fly through space.
During flight, Starship attempts to regenerate eight satellites, “simulators,” and one of the rocket engines of a spacecraft in space. SpaceX failed to hit both of these milestones in the last three test missions.
Even if this V2 Starship prototype similarly satisfies the fate of the disease, SpaceX can once again assemble the test flight as a success.
The company employs an engineering philosophy called “Rapid Iterative Development.” This highlights the launch of relatively inexpensive prototypes with frequent testing missions in large-scale ground tests and other low-risk simulations.
Due to its unique development approach, SpaceX is known to embrace fiery disasters. The company says it will help engineers improve the Starship design even if the test flight fails. This is faster than SpaceX had adopted an alternative engineering approach.
“All lessons learned through both flight and ground testing continue to supply directly to designs due to the next generation of spacecraft and super heavy,” SpaceX’s August 15th statement reads. “There are two flights remaining in the current generation, each with test targets designed to expand the vehicle’s capabilities, as they repeat towards a fully and quickly reusable and reliable rocket.”
SpaceX’s development approach is often considered dangerous and brave, but has served the company in the past.
Once it is out of development and operational, one of the company’s rockets is rarely malfunctioning. The company’s Human SpaceFlight performance using Falcon 9 Rockets was beautiful.
And if the spaceship finally worked, Rayman said it wasn’t just a spacex, or even NASA.
“Because if the entire space industry achieves that promise, it will be an affordable revolution,” Rayman said. “I think there’s a reason for optimism and pessimism, and I think it’s very difficult to predict how this will end.”
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