SpaceX performed a key engine test for its mammoth Super Heavy rocket booster on Thursday — a critical step before it can take the company’s Starship spacecraft to orbit.
(Bloomberg) — SpaceX performed a key engine test for its mammoth Super Heavy rocket booster on Thursday — a critical step before it can take the company’s Starship spacecraft to orbit.
The test’s completion potentially moves Starship closer to its much anticipated inaugural launch to orbit. In development for the last five years, SpaceX’s Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and able to carry large payloads and people to deep space — to the moon and, eventually, Mars.
Initially the company had planned to fire all 33 engines on the Super Heavy booster. In the end, 31 engines were ignited, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Twitter.
Musk said that it was “still enough engines to reach orbit.” However, it’s unclear if the company will attempt another engine test before Starship’s first orbital launch.
When that launch happens, Starship will be the most powerful rocket to ever launch.
Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said earlier this week the rocket’s orbital launch could happen as soon as “the next month or so.”
Still, no official timeline has been set, and the company has previously promised a much shorter schedule than it’s delivered. A year ago at a press event held at the company’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, Musk said Starship would be ready to launch in a “couple of months.”
The test performed Thursday is known as a static fire, as the rocket does not leave the launchpad after firing its engines. The Raptor engines at the base of the rocket, which was held in place at the Starbase site in Boca Chica, burned for seven seconds.
The company, officially known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., confirmed it was a “full duration test.”
It was the first time so many engines had been ignited on the Super Heavy booster simultaneously and the most SpaceX had fired at one time. Previously, it had managed to ignite as many as 14 Raptor engines together.
The static fire test was meant to partially simulate what the Super Heavy booster will need to do when it tests Starship’s first orbital flight.
When that happens, Super Heavy’s engines will burn for nearly three minutes before it separates from Starship and lands in the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship vehicle will then continue on a partial orbit of the Earth before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii.
SpaceX last month completed another major testing milestone known as a wet dress rehearsal, where company engineers fully fuel the vehicle and rocket booster, simulating how the craft will be filled with propellant ahead of a launch.
The company must next obtain a launch license for the mission from the US Federal Aviation Administration.
“The FAA will make a license determination only after the agency is satisfied SpaceX meets all licensing, safety and other regulatory requirements,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement.
(Updated with details from the launch throughout)
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