SpaceX is gearing up for the eleventh flight take a look at of its Starship megarocket, which can launch from its Starbase in Texas as early as Monday. The launch window opens on October 13 at 7:15PM ET. You’ll watch dwell beginning half-hour earlier than liftoff on the SpaceX web site and on X.
Starship’s newest flight follows a profitable take a look at on the finish of August, throughout which it deployed a payload — eight dummy Starlink satellites — in house for the primary time following a failed try earlier within the yr. The corporate is aiming to hold out one other payload demonstration for flight 11, once more utilizing eight Starlink simulators. For this flight, SpaceX is utilizing a beforehand flown Tremendous Heavy booster, with 24 of its 33 Raptor engines being flight-proven. The targets this time round embody “flight experiments gathering knowledge for the following era Tremendous Heavy booster, stress-testing Starship’s heatshield, and demonstrating maneuvers that may mimic the higher stage’s closing method for a future return to launch web site.”
SpaceX will not try and catch Tremendous Heavy in its “chopsticks” again on the launch web site this time. The booster is as an alternative anticipated to finish up within the Gulf of Mexico, whereas Starship will splash down within the Indian Ocean.
