Watch SpaceX launch Starship flight seven with Starlink satellite test

SpaceX will launch the seventh test flight of its Starship rocket on Thursday, as the company looks to further boost development of the mammoth vehicle, including with a crucial test of how it will deploy satellites.

The company has a one-hour window, from 5 pm ET to 6 pm ET, to launch Starship from its private “Starbase” facility near Brownsville, Texas. If SpaceX cannot launch within that window for technical or weather reasons, the company will postpone the attempt to a later date.

There will be no people on board the Starship flight. However, Elon MuskThe company is flying 10 “Starlink simulators” in the rocket’s payload bay and plans to try to deploy satellite-like objects once in space. This is a key test of rocket capabilitiessince SpaceX needs Starship to deploy its next generation of much larger and heavier Starlink satellites.

While SpaceX did not specify what the Starlink simulators are made of, mass simulators are commonly used in rocket vehicle development and are often simple metal or concrete constructions that weigh about the same as the object in question. Since the rocket does not reach orbit, the simulators are expected to follow a similar trajectory to that of the rocket and are designed to burn up during reentry.

Assuming the launch goes as planned, Starship would reach space and then travel halfway to Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and falling into the Indian Ocean about an hour after liftoff.

Additionally, the rocket’s “Super Heavy” booster would return after separating from Starship and land on the arms of the company’s launch tower, a feat the company accomplished. the fifth flight but he missed the sixth.

As with each previous flight, SpaceX aims to further push development by evaluating additional Starship capabilities, including testing of its heat shield plates and the trajectory of its intense re-entry.

Starship is central to the company’s plans, even with its Valuation of 350 billion dollars and already dominant position in the space industry.

Starship is the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked atop the Super Heavy booster, Starship measures 403 feet tall and approximately 30 feet in diameter. SpaceX has flown the entire Starship rocket system in six spaceflight tests so far since April 2023, at an increasing cadence.

The Super Heavy booster, which measures 232 feet tall, is what begins the rocket’s journey into space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust, about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which first released in 2022.

The 171-foot-tall Starship itself has six Raptor engines: three for use in Earth’s atmosphere and three for operation in the vacuum of space.

The rocket runs on liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The entire system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant to launch.

The Starship flying in this launch, labeled Ship 33, also represents a second-generation version of the vehicle, called “Block 2.”

SpaceX noted that the “significant improvements” to this vehicle include changes to the vehicle’s nose flaps, redesigns of its propulsion system to improve performance, an improved flight computer, 30 cameras placed throughout the vehicle to monitor the rocket. and a reinforced heat shield. .

The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to become a new method of transporting cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multimillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis lunar program.