The founder of Spacex, Elon Musk, also wants Starship to fly to Mars, which will also require controlling refueling in space. NASA may also rely on a spaceship and other massive commercial rockets to introduce astronauts from the ground. The Trump administration proposed to cancel the NASA start -up system after two consecutive flights for cheaper commercial options.
Before any of this, SpaceX must prove that he has overcome the failures encountered during the previous two test flights. Both flights failed at the same time – about eight minutes after sliding – at the end of shooting the ship’s engine. Investigators of SpaceX, working under the supervision of the Federal Aviation Administration, determined that the test flight in January failed after the propelent leaks led to a fire in the range of the stern of a rocket or attic. This led to the early closure of the rocket engines and the final breakup.
The engineers came to the conclusion that the leaks were most likely caused by vibrations while climbing the ship into space. The vibrations were resonance with the natural frequency of the vehicle, intensifying shaking beyond the levels of the expected SpaceX. During the next test flight on March 6, SpaceX introduced changes to the ship’s supply lines, directing fuel to Raptors, he regulated fuel temperatures and flew the engines in the modern throttle setting.
But that didn’t solve the problem. Once again, Starship engines cut too early, and the rocket broke up before it fell to the ground. Spacex said “Energy Event” in the stern part of the spacecraft caused the loss of several Raptors engines, and then the loss of posture control and loss of communication with the ship.
The similarities between these two failures suggest a probable design problem with the improved version of Starship “Block 2”, which debuted in January and flew again in March. Starship Block 2 is slightly higher than the SpaceX ship used on the first six rocket flights, with redesigned flaps, improved batteries and avionics, and especially the modern system of fuel supplying fuel for the ship’s vacuum engines.
Spacex did not publish the results of the investigation into Flight 8 failure, and FAA has not yet issued a license to run a flight 9. Similarly, SpaceX has not published any information on the changes introduced to the ship for a ship for the aircraft next week.
What we know about a spaceship vehicle for a 9th-designed 35-designed flight is that it took several attempts to complete the test. SpaceX finished a single -engine fire on April 30, simulating the restart of the Raptor engine in space. Then, on May 1, SpaceX interrupted a six-level test test before he reached the planned 60-second duration. Movies captured by the media observing the test showed a flash in the engine blade, or at least one piece of debris was thrown out of the trench of the flame under the ship.
Spatial crews SpaceX returned the ship 35 to the production place a few kilometers, perhaps to replace the damaged engine, after which the Starship returned back to the test stand on the weekend on Monday’s engine firing.
Now the ship will return to the Starbase compilation place, where technicians will make final preparations for flight 9. The latter tasks may include loading a mock -up of broadband Starlink broadband satellites to the bay of the loading ship and touching the heat shield of the rocket.
These are two elements of a spacecraft that SpaceX engineers will gladly demonstrate Flight 9, except for solving problems with the last two missions. These failures did not prevent the ship to test their satellite implementation and improved thermal disc designed to better withstand the smoking temperatures up to 2600 degrees Fahrenheit (1 430 degrees Celsius) during re -entry.
This story originally appeared Ars Technica.