A “new generation” Starship to begin a “year of transformation”. SpaceX is preparing to launch for the seventh time, Monday at 11 p.m. (French time) from Texas, its 123 meter high megarocket, the most powerful ever designed. The development of this spacecraft is crucial, NASA having chosen it to bring its astronauts back to the Moon as part of the Artemis program. Elon Musk’s company has therefore set ambitious objectives for this seventh flight, marked by major improvements and great firsts.
The Starship should thus attempt for the first time to deploy a payload. Seventeen minutes after takeoff, the megarocket should release ten fake Starlink satellites, “similar in size and weight to new generation Starlinks,” SpaceX specifies on its website. Once in space, a re-ignition of one of the second stage Raptor engines is planned.
The return of the first floor to the hoped-for launch pad
After launch, the company will try to catch its first stage, the 71 meter high and reusable Super Heavy booster, by robotic arms installed on the launch pad, on the launch pad. This objective was already achieved during the fifth flight, on October 13, 2024, but SpaceX failed to repeat this complex maneuver during the following flight, on November 19, 2024, because the conditions were not right to attempt it. . The first stage had ended up in the Gulf of Mexico and disintegrated.
Elon Musk’s company has already indicated that this scenario could happen again on Monday: the return of the Super Heavy to the launch pad will only take place “if the conditions are good”, it indicates. , and “the booster will fall back on a trajectory which will bring it to a gentle landing in the Gulf of Mexico” if all the lights are not green for a catch-up by the launch tower. This has also been improved and the sensors of its articulated arms protected to prevent them from being damaged during launch, as during the sixth flight.
An improved Starship
To achieve its mission objectives, the Starship which should take off on Monday is a “2.0” version which presents “significant improvements”, describes SpaceX. The fins located at the front of the second stage, 52 meters high, were reduced in size and moved towards the nose of the craft, further from the thermal abacus in order to “reduce their exposure to heat during re-entry” . The heat shield, in fact, uses new generation tiles and includes a backup layer to protect it from possible missing or damaged tiles.
The propulsion system has also been improved, with, among other things, a 25% increase in the volume of the fuel tanks, all to “improve the vehicle and allow it to carry out longer missions”. The technical part of the Starship has also been revised with the aim of ensuring increasingly complex missions: more powerful flight computer, improved communication, super-powerful intelligent batteries and transition to more than 30 on-board cameras to allow engineers to benefit from an overview of hardware performance.
Among the new features brought to this new version of the Starship, we note a great first: the reuse of a Raptor engine, recovered from the booster launched and returned to the launch pad during the fifth flight of the megarocket.
A first and experiences
The seventh flight of the megarocket also represents an opportunity for SpaceX to test several alternatives on various elements of the vehicle, starting with the heat shield. “A significant number” of tiles were removed to test vulnerable areas of the second floor and several metal tile options were used to observe their behavior during atmospheric reentry, the company said.
With the aim of improving and optimizing the second stage catch-up phase by the launch tower arms, several versions of connectors were installed on the sides of the vehicle. Radar sensors will also be tested on the robotic arms to improve the accuracy of distances measured between the launch tower and a Starship returning to it. Painstaking work necessary if SpaceX wants to target the Moon and Mars with its megarocket.
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