The American space company SpaceX will make its second attempt on Thursday in an orbital test flight to launch the world’s largest spacecraft, the Starship, which will return astronauts to the surface of the moon.
The launch, without a crew, will be made from SpaceX’s Starbase base, in Texas, in the United States, and the chance will begin at 2:28 PM (Lisbon time).
A technical glitch on Monday led to the postponement of the launch of the spacecraft designed by SpaceX, by tycoon Elon Musk, to make trips to the moon and Mars.
Teams work towards Thursday, April 20 for first flight test of fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy missile → https://t.co/bG5tsCUanp pic.twitter.com/umcqhJCGai
– SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 17, 2023
Starhip will make its first test flight attached to the Super Heavy rocket developed by SpaceX to carry the spacecraft, which previously performed suborbital tests, at about 10 kilometers altitude.
Together, the two modules – the rocket and the spacecraft – are 120 meters high and capable of carrying more than 100 tons of cargo.
According to the flight plan for the new test, the Super Heavy missile should separate from the Starship about three minutes after takeoff and fall into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Immediately, the Starship spacecraft will start its six engines and continue to ascend on its own to an altitude of about 150 kilometers.
After making just under one round-trip of about an hour around the Earth, the spacecraft will land in the Pacific Ocean.
It is with Starship that the North American Space Agency (NASA) plans to deliver the first female astronaut and the first black astronaut to the surface of the moon in 2025, under the new Artemis lunar program.
Only American astronauts, 12 in all and all men, stepped on the moon between 1969 and 1972 during the Apollo program.
Astronauts will take off again from Earth to the Moon aboard another spacecraft, the Orion, docked with another rocket, the SLS, NASA’s most powerful but less powerful than SpaceX’s Super Heavy.
After separating from the SLS, a non-reusable rocket, Orion will head toward lunar orbit where it will dock with Starship (previously placed in lunar orbit). The SpaceX spacecraft will then continue to the surface of the moon.
SpaceX wants the Super Heavy and Starship to be fully reusable. In the future, the rocket should land next to its launch tower and the spacecraft should return to Earth using retrorockets, a maneuver that has been attempted multiple times in 2020 and 2021.
Source: DN
