SpaceX has shared spectacular imagery showing a static fire of the Super Heavy booster ahead of its fifth test flight as part of the Starship vehicle.
Three videos show the test in which the booster’s Raptor engines are fired up while the vehicle is firmly secured to the ground. SpaceX also posted several photos of the same test.
Photos from static fire pic.twitter.com/WZMVwklWtO
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 15, 2024
The 120-meter-tall Starship — comprising the first-stage Super Heavy booster and upper-stage Starship spacecraft — is the world’s most powerful rocket and will one day fly crew and cargo to the moon, Mars, and perhaps even further into deep space.
The rocket is widely expected to fly again next month, with Monday’s engine test part of the preparations for that mission.
Creating a colossal 17 million pounds of thrust at launch — nearly twice that of NASA’s new Space Launch System rocket — the Starship is an astonishing spectacle as it roars skyward from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
The Starship’s first test flight took place in April last year, but an anomaly just minutes after launch forced controllers to blow up the rocket in midair over the Gulf of Mexico.
The second test suffered a similar fate, though made some progress as that time the spacecraft managed to successfully separate from the booster. The third and fourth tests, with the latter taking place in June, showed dramatic improvements in the flight system, with the missions achieving most of their goals.
The fifth test flight, which SpaceX boss Elon Musk has said could take place in August, will try out a new landing procedure where the Super Heavy booster is “caught” by huge mechanical arms on the launch tower.
SpaceX has already nailed the landing procedure for its trusty Falcon 9 rocket, but that vehicle is much smaller and uses legs to land on the ground. The Super Heavy, on the other hand, doesn’t have landing legs and will need to be secured by the launch tower.
Bringing the Super Heavy home in this way will allow SpaceX to reuse all of the Super Heavy boosters that it makes, enabling it to dramatically cut launch costs.
Static fires are an important part of mission preparations and ensure that the rocket engines are working as designed. Such tests don’t always go to plan, however, with this recent one in China taking an unexpected turn when the rocket climbed high into the sky before crashing, when it should have stayed on the ground.
