🔶 Starship on the way to Earth orbit; SpaceX’s big test

Three years after its first test flight, SpaceX’s Starship rocket today Monday, September 28 (Mehr 6) attempted to enter Earth orbit; a key step in developing this massive launcher designed for future missions to the Moon and Mars.

SpaceX, the technology company owned by Elon Musk, after last June’s highly publicized initial public offering, plans to accelerate the development of Starship with its 14th test flight, which has ambitious goals.

The test, expected to last about 10 hours, if everything goes according to plan, will include a flight of the rocket’s upper stage to Earth orbit and the deployment of 26 next-generation Starlink satellites there.

But this launch, which was scheduled to begin at 7:15 a.m. local time (12:15 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time) in Texas, could be accompanied by unexpected events, because several previous tests ended with huge explosions.

After several years of development and testing in Texas, SpaceX began flying the Starship rocket with its full configuration from 2023, and intentionally chose suborbital trajectories that are safer and involve fewer challenges.

Multiple changes have been made to this black-and-silver giant— the largest and most powerful structure that has ever flown.

However, major technical challenges lie ahead for Starship, which Musk hopes to make fully reusable, in order to have it ready for commercial flights or for reaching the Moon or Mars.

SpaceX hopes that this new test will usher in a “new and exciting phase” of development, which will include, among other things, testing rocket refueling in orbit.

The spacecraft was launched today Monday on a suborbital trajectory, and if all systems work properly, it will then enter orbit after re-igniting its engines.

Catherine Curley, senior analyst at the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies at Georgetown University, explained: “This is the hardest part,” which, according to her, requires “more force and more complex calculations.”

She told Agence France-Presse that to reach the required altitude and speed, “the rocket must have different performance when encountering different levels of gravity.”

In this flight, SpaceX intends to reach a circular orbit at an altitude of about 275 kilometers above Earth, which requires achieving a speed of about 28,000 kilometers per hour.

If Starship achieves this goal, it will then attempt to deploy satellites into orbit that are designed to expand SpaceX’s massive internet satellite constellation.