SpaceX a franchise ce jeudi an important stage in the development of its mega-fusée Starship, intended for the emmener of humans on Moon and Mars, in réalisant an impressive test au sol de ses moteurs, ainsi la voie à a possible premier orbital vol next month.
For a few seconds, with a loud roar, the rocket’s first stage Raptor engines ignited, forming a huge fireball and sending up a thick cloud of smoke over the SpaceX base at Boca Chica in the southern tip of Texas.
One of them was turned off by the SpaceX teams “just before the start” of the test, and an engine “stopped by itself”, he detailed.
Take off in March?
This launcher has never flown in its complete configuration, with its first stage, called Super Heavy and 69 meters high. Only the Starship spacecraft, the rocket’s second stage, made suborbital test flights, several of which ended in impressive explosions.
In early February, Elon Musk had indicated that “if all the remaining tests go well”, a Starship takeoff with Super Heavy would be attempted in March.
Starship was chosen by NASA to take its astronauts to the Moon during the Artemis 3 mission, which will officially take place in 2025. But there is still a long way to go.
“We don’t want flight 15 to carry people,” but “100 or 200,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX number 2, told a conference in Washington on Wednesday. “We should be able to have hundreds of flights before we get people to the moon, that’s the goal.”
space tourists
Last year, American billionaire Jared Isaacman announced a partnership with SpaceX for three space missions, the latest of which will be Starship’s first manned flight.
The Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, the then American businessman Dennis Tito (the first space tourist in history), also announced that they would board this rocket for a trip around the Moon.
Both rocket stages must be recovered and reused. According to SpaceX, it must allow humanity to colonize Mars.
Source: BFM TV
