Watch SpaceX launch seventh Starship flight with Starlink satellite test

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

The company has a one-hour window, from 5 p.m. ET to 6 p.m. ET, to launch Starship from its private “Starbase” facility near Brownsville, Texas. If SpaceX is unable to launch at that time due to weather or technical reasons, the company will postpone the attempt until a later time.

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

While SpaceX did not specify what the Starlink simulators are made of, mass simulators are commonly used in rocket design and are often simple structures made of metal or concrete that weigh about the same as the object in question. Since the rocket does not go into orbit, the simulators are expected to follow the same trajectory as the rocket and are designed to burn up on reentry.

Assuming the launch goes according to plan, the Starship will reach space and then fly halfway around Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and plunging into the Indian Ocean about an hour after launch.

In addition, the “super heavy” launch vehicle will return after separating from the Starship and land on the company’s launch tower structure, a feat that the company has accomplished the fifth flight but missed on the sixth.

As with each previous flight, SpaceX is looking to advance further development by evaluating additional capabilities of Starship, including tests of heat shield tiles and its intensive reentry trajectory.

The Starship is crucial to the company’s plans, even with it An estimate of $350 billion and already a dominant position in the space industry.

Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully folded on the Super Heavy Starship booster, it is 403 feet tall and about 30 feet in diameter. Since April 2023, SpaceX has conducted six constant-velocity space tests of the Starship rocket system.

The 232-foot-tall Super-Heavy Launch Vehicle is where a rocket’s journey into space begins. At its heart are 33 Raptor engines that together generate 16.7 million pounds of thrust—roughly twice the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which first launched in 2022.

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

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

The Starship, designated as Ship 33, is also a version of the second generation vehicle called “Block 2”.

SpaceX said the vehicle’s “significant upgrades” include changes to the vehicle’s nose flaps, a redesign of its propulsion system for improved performance, an improved on-board computer, 30 cameras positioned along the vehicle to monitor the rocket, and a reinforced heat shield. .

The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to be a new way to transport cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX has received a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crew for a lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis program.