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SpaceX has just conducted its most ambitious and powerful test yet with a Mars Starship.
SpaceX I lit 14 Raptor engines on the Booster 7, a prototype of the StarshipA Super Heavy first stage rocket, during a “steady fire” test today (November 14) at Starbase, the company’s facility in south Texas.
“Full test duration for 14 engines,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted (Opens in a new tab) Shortly after the still fire, which occurred at 1:51 p.m. EST (1851 GMT) and lasted about 10 seconds. The test was captured on video by observers such as NASASpaceFlight (Opens in a new tab) And the Rocket Ranch Boca Chica (Opens in a new tab).
Related: SpaceX has launched the Starship Super Heavy booster again in a long engine test
Static fires are common first test experiments in which the rocket engines are ignited for a brief period while the vehicle remains pinned to the ground.
And SpaceX is preparing for a flight with the Starship — the program’s first orbital test mission, which will apparently include Booster 7 and an upper-stage prototype known as Ship 24. This historic flight could launch before the end of the year, musk He said.
Today’s still fire could be a big step toward orbital liftoff: It doubled the previous largest number of Raptor engines that SpaceX ignited during a spacecraft engine test. But there’s still a lot of work to do to prove Booster 7 is ready to fly; The car includes 33 Raptors.
The Ship 24 sports six Raptor engines. SpaceX lit them all simultaneously during a September 8 fixed fire.
SpaceX is developing a Starship to carry people and cargo to the moon and Marsin addition to performing a variety of other spaceflight missions.
The spacecraft models have flown a few test flights so far, but none have gone more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) into the sky. And none of them participated in a super heavy vehicle.
SpaceX has already signed a number of customers to the Starship, including NASA, which selected the vehicle as its first manned lander for its crew. Artemis program Lunar exploration. If all goes according to plan, astronauts will land on the moon in 2025 or 2026 aboard the Starship on the Artemis 3 mission.
Special agents have also signed up to ride the Starship on missions around (not on) the Moon. Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa I booked a whole tripFor example, space tourism pioneer Dennis Tito and his wife Akiko Bought two seats on a different mission.
Mike Wall is the author of “Abroad (Opens in a new tab)Book (Major Grand Publishing, 2018; illustration by Carl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @employee (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @employee (Opens in a new tab) or on Facebook (Opens in a new tab).
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